Madurai girls bag third prize in NASA Space Settlement Contest

Zee Media Bureau/Salome Phelamei

Madurai: Five girls from the city of Madurai have won the third prize in the Space Settlement Design Contest 2014, co-sponsored by NASA Ames and the National Space Society (NSS), under the Literary Merit category. The girls from Sri Saradha Vidyalayam Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Madurai have bagged the prestigious prize for their fictional work titled `Cronus-The Utopia`. The team is made up of Class XI students - SB Vishaka Nandini, M Shenbagam, K Kamali, P Dhivya Priya and SG Yogalakshmi. In the competition, they describe their idea of Cronus- a fictional space orbit of Saturn, as a human settlement in deep space in the year 2250 as a result of depletion of natural resources on Earth. “In the recent years, depletion of natural resources in Earth is rapid. In our work of fiction, we have created Cronus, which is diverse from Earth in so many ways. The resources available are all similar to the Earth, but those living there are well efficient in conservation of nature and are unaware of corruption and other vices prevailing here,” Nandini said. “In contrast to the present day Earth, where waste is not managed properly and chemical fertilisers are used in agriculture, inhabitants of Cronus are very efficient in recycling waste, make best use of solar and wind power, and use bio fertilisers in their aeroponic farms,” added Yogalakshmi. The annual competitions, which were carried under different categories such as Artistic Merit, Literary Merit and Projects on Space Settlement, encourage students to come up with sustainable future space settlement ideas. As the winners, the students will get the chance to attend the International Space Development Conference in May, this year.