Star trekkers return wiser

DeccanChronicle: Star trekkers return wiser
It was a ‘Star Trek’ experience for four children of Kerala who were chosen for a five-day intensive training programme at the Singapore Space Academy.

From guiding a moon-rover and floating around in zero gravity to building a rocket and surviving in frozen landscapes, they learnt a little bit of everything that space-farers need to know.

“To experience what zero gravity feels like, we did scuba diving,” says Blessy Jayachandran, who studies at the Government Higher Secondary School in Pattom here.

“And we were taken to a place called Snow City which resembled Arctic wastes.”

Apart from Blessy, Michelle Anne George of the Believer’s Church Residential School in Tiruvalla, Rahul Joseph Cecil of the St Pauls International School, Ernakulam and S.A. Narayanan of the St Thomas Residential School in Thiruvananthapuram were part of the Saura Yaathrika team that was sent to the academy by Kerala Travels as part of its golden jubilee initiative.

The training sessions from May 30 to June 3 were conducted by former NASA engineers including Timothy Kaufman, Brandon Wall and Nadire .

“It has given me the courage to pursue my first love-astronomy,” says Rahul.

For Narayanan, the youngest of the lot, the most exciting part of the training was the sky diving.
“We did it in an indoor area and the wind kept lifting us up,” he gushes. “It was thrilling.”

Michelle also chips in to say that the programme had increased her determination to study astrophysics.

It was not just fun and frolic. The children also the learnt the theory and history of space science and rocket propulsion.

“Before I went there, I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer,” says Blessy. “But now I dream of becoming an astronaut.”