A team of students from the Amity International School from Gaziabad has won the prestigious 20th Annual International Space Settlement Design Competition, 2015, held at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, while many Indian schools have won recognition and mention in the results.

The final round of Space Settlement Design Competition was held between August 2-4 with ‘4 companies’ and 50 participants from several countries across the world. Named ‘Argonom Bult’, the Amity model to be built inside a crater was designed taking into account the soil quality to withstand dust storms and it costs $1.2 trillion and it accommodates 24,000 inhabitants.

The design built in 48 hours and it included two main settlements and four ancillary settlements using a transparent material, ‘Aluminium Oxinitride’, she said.

The International Space Settlement Design Competition was to encourage school students in aerospace engineering.

NASA said in 2015, it received 994 entries from 3,007 students sponsored by 380 teachers and 21 countries particiapted in it. Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech Rebublic, India, Ireland, Japan, Malayasia, Mexico, Montenegro, Nepal, Pakistan, Romania, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay had sent several school teams while the US entries were received from 14 states and territories: California, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Puerto Rico, Texas, and Virginia.

The team was able to outshine other teams by studying each and every aspect of developing a colony in Mars from the type of material to power generation, besides power and water recycling.