BASIS hosts NASA Space Apps Challenge 2022

Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services-BASIS has organised NASA Space Apps Challenge 2022 in collaboration with BASIS students forum for the eighth consecutive time.

This Hack-a-Thon will run continuously for 36 hours starting from Friday. The award ceremony will be held on Saturday, said a press release on Friday.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration-NASA is implementing this project internationally in 313 cities around the world, while BASIS has organised it in 9 cities in Bangladesh (Dhaka, Chittagong Sylhet, Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal, Rangpur, Mymensingh and Comilla). In addition to engaging 1 crore students through social media, the NASA Space Apps Challenge is planning to engage 2 lakh students directly and through competitions.

This time more than 2 thousand contestants from 9 different cities of the country has participated. From there, out of the top 110 projects, top 50 projects will participate in hybrid model and the remaining 60 projects through online in the two-day long Hack-a-Thon which is taking place at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) from 30th September 2022 to 1st October 2022.

At the opening ceremony of NASA Space Apps Challenge BASIS President Russell T Ahmed, Vice President (Admin) Abu Daud Khan, BASIS Director AKM Ahmedul BABU and NASA Space Apps Challenge 2022 Convener and BASIS Director Mr. Tanvir Hossain Khan were present. NASA Space Apps Challenge 2022’s Adviser Mohammad Mahdee-uz-Zaman and Ariful Hasan Opu were also present at the opening ceremony.

“Last year, (2022) Bangladesh was divided into 9 zones and more than 1,000 applications were received, out of which 50 projects were nominated for the Virtual Hack-a-Thon. 18 projects participated in NASA’s final competition. Among them, for the second time, the world champion in the “Best Mission Concept” category of NASA Space Apps Challenge 2021 was “Team Mohakash “, nominated as the champion from Khulna, Bangladesh by defeating 4534 teams”, said Mr. Russell T. Ahmed, President, BASIS.

Convener of NASA Space Apps Challenge Mr. Tanvir Hossain Khan said, “Apart from space issues, the Hack-Thon is being held in 23 sub-categories under 14 categories including climate, moon, other planets and stars. Our young scientists are working to solve these category based problems.