BUET team becomes category champion in NASA apps contest

A team of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology has become champion in honourable mention category of  NASA Space Apps Competition.

Out of 3,800 projects enlisted from 150 countries, Bangladeshi team, BUET Zenith, became the champion in the category, said a press release.

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration has recently published a list of the world champions on its website for NASA Space Apps Competition 2020.

For the sixth time in a row, Bangladesh took part in the competition under the patronage of the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS).

As the organiser of the competition in Bangladesh, BASIS organised the NASA Space Apps Challenge 2020 on a large scale in nine cities of Bangladesh.

From there, BASIS submitted 17 projects of the winner and runner-up teams to NASA. In the final round, two teams — BUET Zenith from Dhaka district and VAKpicker from Barisal district — were among the 40 finalists.

The BUET Zenith team has once again made a name for itself in the NASA Space App Competition this year as it did in 2018, said president of BASIS Syed Almas Kabir. “This is a matter of great pride for us,” he said.

“I believe that the youth of Bangladesh will repeatedly present the country in a respectable place in the court of the world in this way,” Kabir added.

Mehrab Haque, one of members of the BUET Zenith project, said they were working to increase satellite connectivity to humans through social platforms using NASA data.

“The main task of the project is to collect all this information about where a satellite is in space and make it easily available to people,” he said.

Other members of the BUET Zenith are Fabia Tasnim, Mehrab Haque, Tamimul Ihsan, Rabib Karim, Zahidul Islam and Hasan Masum.

Various teams around the world have been working with NASA’s open data to solve real-world problems on the earth and in space since 2012. Hundreds of regional leaders from around the world host events at specific times each year with the help of NASA’s Global Organising Team.

Earlier, Bangladesh became the champion in the “Best Data User” category in a NASA competition in 2018.