The students of Sapphire International School, Ranchi, who returned from a Nasa camp last week. Telegraph picture

Ranchi, Oct. 20: Medicine, engineering and civil services are no longer the coveted jobs they used to be. Youngsters now want to become astronauts and space scientists and schools are ensuring that their dreams turn into reality, even if for a week.

Ten students of Sapphire International School, Ranchi, got lucky when they got a chance to attend a six- day Under-13 space camp at Nasa.

Having returned recently, about 150 students from five countries, including China, Costa Rica, Thailand, USA and India, attended the camp. The children have done the school and the country proud by bagging two prizes at the camp.

They came first in the patch designing competition, in which they were required to design a logo for their space camp. The school team also received a prize for being the most outstanding group.

Ten-year-old Sarthak Tiwari was still reeling from his experience.

“I’m still feeling as if I am on one of the simulators,” said Sarthak, referring to the gadgets used to train astronauts for the near zero-gra-vity experience similar to the feel of being in a space shuttle and the physiolo- gical consequences of it on the body.

Aspiring astronaut Sanket Kohli said: “Anything rela- ted to space has always fired my imagination since childhood. During our week at the camp, we travelled in different simulators like space shot, G force accelerators and multi-access trainers which trained us for trave-lling in space.

“We were feeling like real astronauts. Everyday we were assigned different missions, including the rocket-launching mission in which we made a miniature rocket and launched it.”

Sanket added that in the evening they had theory classes related to the next day’s activity, which included watching space-related movies in I-Max theatres, learning to make Oobleck, a component used in rocket fuels and a host of other activities.

School principal Anupama Singh and academic councillor-cum-science teacher Asma had accompanied the children to the camp.

“Some Nasa representatives based in India came to the school and selected the children after we came to know that this camp was being organised by Nasa. This camp was a learning, as well as growing, experience for the children. It helped develop their interactive as well as leadership skills, apart from opening up a new avenue of space science for them,” said Singh.