24-Hour NASA Space App Challenge 2019 Begins

Think you can save the planet with your tech skills? So, do the 1000 participants of the NASA Space App Challenge 2019, who began to furiously work for change by the presentation of various issues and their solutions on Thursday, Sep 17 in Mumbai. The early-stage, pre-hackathon challenge for the event has been organised at the Thakur College of Engineering and Technology, Kandivali (W) and five groups from Thakur College of Engineering and Technology (TCET, Mumbai) and two groups from Thakur Polytechnic Institute (Tpoly) have been selected for final round which will be organised in New Delhi in the month of October 2019.

Thakur College of Engineering and Technology (TCET, Mumbai) has partnered with the 7-year-old challenge as part of its drive to give wings and a platform to budding minds in the city. In fact, the 1000 participants who have descended at the campus for the 2-day challenge, have come here from different colleges across Maharashtra.

The NASA Space App Challenge 2019 is an annual, international hackathon, which is organised in multiple phases or rounds across the world. Organised across multiple cities in India, this intense competition sees students work on solutions for a host of problems plaguing the earth today. These range from smart communication with satellites to food technology and renewable energy, border management issues, surveillance and even volcanoes and asteroids.

Keen students who are participating in the continuous event have signed up for the drive online before coming to the registered centres, sometimes even without full teams or coding know-how. In these cases, the organisers draw up teams from the pool of participants, grouping like-minded individuals together.

The teams who clears the event at TCET, Mumbai and other centers stand a chance to present their ideas at the final round of the event, to be held in October 2019 at New Delhi or Hyderabad. The prizes for preliminary round taking place in Mumbai will be the certificates and gold medals to the winners. Such 8 groups of different colleges are selected for the final round from the competition held at TCET.

Dr. B.K. Mishra, Principal, TCET Mumbai, said that at TCET Mumbai, they believe in nurturing the fire and passion of all students in driving change across the world, in their respective ways. They are very excited to partner with the NASA Space Apps Challenge 2019 and are waiting, hoping for the best idea to emerge from the ground, he said.

The NASA Space Apps Challenge is also being held concurrently at IIT Powai, with an equal number of participants there.