Space Apps: Bangladeshi team wins Nasa contest

A virtual reality (VR) project developed by four students of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) has won NASA's Space Apps Challenge, a global competition. 

Using this mobile VR application, called “Lunar VR”, anyone can experience landing on moon on Apollo-11 and walk around the satellite.

Team Olik, the winning team, used a 3D model and data from NASA resources to create the virtual demonstration. NASA also gave them some challenges to solve, said Abu Sabiq Mahdi, the team leader.

“I cannot express my feelings of winning this kind of global award and now we will get opportunities to meet the best space scientist in NASA and can experience the launching of satellites directly,” said Mahdi, a student of the geography and environment department of SUST.

The other three members of the team were Kazi Mainul Islam and Sabbir Hasan from the same department and SM Rafee Adnan from the physics department.

The team's moderator Bishwapriyo Chakrabarty, assistant professor of Computer Science and Engineering department of SUST, will also accompany the team during the NASA visit.

Team Olik beat 1,395 teams from around the world.

The announcement was made on Saturday via an email sent to the winners. The team has been asked to visit the aeronautics and space science research center of NASA soon, Mahdi added.

Earlier in the selection round, Team Olik made it to the top four along with teams from California, Kuala Lumpur and Yamaguchi in Japan on December 8.

Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS), under the initiative of BASIS students' forum, has been organising teams from Bangladesh for the NASA Space Apps Challenge every year.

For this year, the BASIS had chosen eight teams to submit their projects to NASA, after a massive competition across the country where they selected the top 40 from 2000 projects.

Telecom and ICT minister Mustafa Jabbar and ICT state minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak have congratulated the winning team.

Jabbar said digital Bangladesh was developing by holding the hands of the country's youth.

“This young team has made us proud,” said Jabbar, also a former president of BASIS.