BIT students, whose model has been selected by Nasa, in Patna on Thursday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, Feb. 17: Nine students from Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Patna, have been invited to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) to participate in the second annual Lunabotics Mining Competition.

The competition will be held between May 23 and 28 at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. Nasa experts would judge the competitors’ models. The team will have to build a remote-controlled autonomous excavator that can collect a minimum 10kg lunar stimulant within 15 minutes.

The students from BIT Patna are among the few selected teams from universities and technical institutions all over the world who have been invited to the international conference.

Peetak Mitra, a second-year undergraduate student of civil engineering, is leading the nine-member team.

Peetak, who is in the soil and stimulant analysts’ team, told The Telegraph: “It is a dream come true for us. We have worked very hard. BIT, Patna is the only institute from eastern India that has been selected for the competition.”

Nasa Lunabotics Mining Competition is a university-level competition designed to engage and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The competition encourages innovation among the students. The innovative ideas generated at the competition may also benefit Nasa in its to lunar missions.

Winners of the competition will get an opportunity to participate in the Nasa Desert Research and Technology Studies. Nasa also plans to incorporate the winning design into its scheme of things while planning its Moon Mission 2020, barring a few changes.

Subhomoy Ghosh, another team member and a second-year undergraduate student of civil engineering, said: “It is a big achievement for us that we have made it to the international competition. We expect the people of our country to support us.”

Explaining the plan they have prepared for the competition, Mitra and Ghosh said the focus of the competition is on developing a low-cost and technologically superior rover-cum-excavator. The robot is designed on the principle of Archimedes Screw.

K.K. Srivastva, the director of BIT, Patna, said: “It is a matter great pride for us that for the first time students from any technical institute in Bihar have been selected to participate in an international competition related to lunar excavations.”

He said the institute is providing full co-operation to the students who are giving finishing touches to the project and the institute is also talking to several corporate companies for sponsorship. On the initiative of the students and our institute, the Central Coalfield Limited, Ranchi, and the Canara Bank have agreed to sponsor the project.”

Srivastava added: “The project cost is Rs 10 lakh and the students are expecting sponsorship from some corporate companies too. The students have also approached the state government and we are expecting some help.”