Bangladeshi team wins NASA Space Apps Challenge 2022

A Bangladeshi team has become the world champion at NASA Space Apps Challenge 2022 beating 5327 teams from 162 countries.

“Team Diamonds” from Cumilla, secured top place in the competition in “Most Inspirational” category, according to results published on the website of the Space Apps Challenge at 12:30 am on Friday night Bangladesh time.

This is the second time a Bangladeshi team won the top place in competition.

Tisha Khandker, a student of Daffodil International University, captained this year’s five-member champion team.

The remaining members are Munim Ahmed (UX designer) Inzamamul Haque Sonnet (system architect), Abu Niaz (developer) of the same university, and Zareen Chowdhury (researcher) of North South University.

The team developed an interactive game-based space learning material specially developed for kids from 10 to 12 years, according to the project summary published on NASA Space Apps Challenge website. The project was named “Diamond In The Sky”.

The game enables kids to learn more about the stellar variability and also finds out how the night sky is dynamic. Playing this game will help kids recognise a star’s pattern and learn about its colour as well as the brightness of the star.

The purpose of the games is to offer children the opportunity to understand the star twinkling, the slow changes in the night sky as well as why they happened.

“It is our belief that our app will create a new eye for kids to see the unseen”, the team said in a statement.

Among the participants from four continents of the world, National Taiwan University Civil Engineering was the best in the “Best Use of Science” category in this list of 10 category champions, it also said.

In 2021, another team from Bangladesh “Team Mohakash” from Khulna, secured top place beating 4,534 teams from 162 countries in the competition in Best Mission Concept category. Their project proposed the Advanced Regolith Sampler System (ARSS) to help astronauts get rid of space dust in future missions.