UNI
MUMBAI: A team of scientists from the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have arrived here to interact with Indian students and invite them for a technical competition as part of the space agency's ambitious Mars mission.
A senior official close to the NASA scientists programme told UNI, ''a team of scientists have already reached here. They are going to interact with students across the country.''
The three-member NASA team including Dr Amitabh Ghosh, Dr Jim rice and Dr Michael Wyatt, completed their lecture series in Chennai, Hyderabad and New Delhi last week and arrived Mumbai on Tuesday morning for the concluding session of their visit. These scientists are working with the NASA for its Mars mission.
NASA will be selecting students across the country for serious technical competitions including the system design and navigation. The students might get a chance to visit NASA headquarters during the launch of the space craft for Mars mission.
The NASA team are visiting India at a time when India and the US have agreed to increase collaboration in space science research and application.
Both the countries have constituted a joint working group last year comprising scientists from NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
Earlier this month, NASA had given the green signal to the mars project to put a long-armed Lander onto the icy grounds of the far-northern Martian plains.
NASA's Phoenix Lander is designed to examine the site for potential habitats for water ice, and to look for possible indicators of life, past or present. The spacecraft for the mission would be launched in August 2007.
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