Igniting Young Minds in Space Education across the whole India
Igniting Young Minds president Ratnesh Mishra explains the motivation behind the initiative to promote space and satellite education across all states in India.
Space and Science Communication is the reason I started this blog. There is a need that science and technology done at the uppermost level to reach the masses of our country. Recently, my satellite team mentor and friend, Ratnesh Mishra has started an initiative with Igniting Young Minds to increase space awareness in education institutes in all states of India. I asked him to give a brief overview of this initiative in today's space talks.
What is Igniting Young Minds?
IYM is a platform to promote space and satellite education for every young mind that is for the entire student community from any school all around India. It involves a group of people with several years of experience in education ranging from people of education ministry, various school principals and young /talented space enthusiasts. IYM performs workshops, lectures on space and satellite for schools with distinguished speakers from multiple IITs, ISRO scientists and many such space experts.
Where did you get the idea? What is the motivation behind this?
We were used to giving lectures on satellites in various school and education institutes during college times. We wanted to keep that rolling, for us it might be a piece of interest, but for children, it is “The Need”. So yes on one of the similar discussion with Mr Ravi Shankar, Founder of IYM this initiative took birth.
IYM is imbibed with the dreams of Dr Kalam and proudly contributes to his vision of developing the nation by building the youth of INDIA, so yes, that is the motivation.
What all do you plan to do under IYM? And is there anything concrete which we may see within the next few weeks?
IYM started with space education is now also involved in various activities done by students like plantation (we recently organized a “selfie with the plant” initiative where children have to plant a new tree and share their happiness in terms of selfies), we are also in the process of promoting education kits to the needy children with the help of fund collection from workshops.
Yes, definitely we have workshops lined up for next 5 Saturday and Sundays in various states like Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh and many more are in the process of finalization.
How did you get interested in Space/ Aerospace yourself?
As I tell every student that the dream which I saw in my childhood, of touching the sky and roaming around the whole world, got fulfilled by “Pratham” the student satellite of IIT Bombay. The remarkable project where I was fortunate enough to have the launch of “Pratham” with ISRO PSLV in my tenure as the team leader. This step of rocket science actually brought me close to space and satellite systems. And yes, providing that opportunity to many more students like me is now the IYM interest.
Can you describe the experience of Making and Launching a satellite?
Finally, what are the future goals of IYM?
Igniting Young Minds is currently connecting all such space experts with every young mind, and it is on track to cover all the states as early as possible with a future aim to build a space school in India.
Thank You Ratnesh Mishra for finding the time. Keep Igniting Young Minds to take up space science and technology.
Co-Founder: GTarang Energy Solutions
President: Igniting Young Minds