‘I didn’t give much thought to the universe’: India’s first astronaut in 40 years inspires next generation of stargazers | Global development

AS The international space station is on India this weekend, many of them seek eyes to have an overview as the excited schoolchildren progresses, who, like millions across the country, will have the eyes, hopes and dreams pinned on the astronaut shubhanshu shukla, the first Indian to visit the ISS.

“What if astronauts find evidence of intelligent life forms in space? Or even better, what happens if the experiences of Shubhanshu Shukla help humans discover a way to survive other planets?” Said Deborshi Halder, a 15 -year -old excited child. His classmate is however worried. “But if the places beyond the earth become habitable, we, humans, can also land the operator, leading to space pollution,” explains Sabnam Sireen.

Shukla, an Indian Air Force test pilot, ISRO engineer and astronaut (Indian Space Research Organization), is a pilot on Axiom Mission 4. Shux as mentioned by his colleagues, is only the second Indian to go to Orbit, after Rakesh Sharma made this jump in 1984.

The ISS should be visible since India on Saturday evening, if the sky remains clear.

Deborshi and Sabnam are both standard students of the 10th year (11th year) of Kalash High School, a school sponsored by the government of Western Bengal, and like their classmates, they are naturally impressed by the astronaut. While the news directs their conversations, it credits their nuanced understanding of planetary environments to a recent workshop on the science of space, graceful of the base of life and beyond. The non -profit organization, created in 2022, is an original idea of the scientific communicator Sibsankar Palit. The organization has a scientific research and development wing and an arm dedicated to the promotion of scientific literacy.

Over the past three years, the NGO has organized more than 30 educational workshops on space sciences for students. More than half have taken place in primary and secondary schools across India, especially in remote forestry and tribal areas, as in Sukma, Chhattisgarh, a state affected by Maoist insurrection movements.

“We cannot count alone on the textbooks, children need something interactive to arouse their curiosity,” explains Palit. But laboratory equipment can be expensive and many students do not have access to tools such as miniature spacecraft or solar systems models. Only 53.6% of the 276,840 secondary schools in India had joined scientific laboratories in 2021-2022.

Palit learned to improvise. During a recent workshop in Kalash High School, the students sat in the ground on the ground while he helped them create an orrerery in paper and a model of a spacecraft. While the school has a modest laboratory, the teacher Saikat Ganguly was looking for other means to increase the interest of students for astronomy.

Fardin Ahmed, a 14 -year -old student in Kalash who attended the workshop and now has his own solar system model, says: “I learned the solar system of books. But I haven’t thought much about the size of the universe. I realize now that we sit here in this small neighborhood, in India, on earth, are part of a Galaxy Vast and infinite. ”

Imrana Rahaman and Labiba Naaz, both 15 years old, are delighted to learn that the ISS will be visible on the nights and the two girls hope to have a glimpse and a sign of their hero. A few years ago, a science teacher presented them with a planetarium application. Girls do not have mobile phones, but downloaded the application on their parents’ phones.

Ganguly says: “Since then, the duo has used mobile technology to study the night sky. Now they use an application to follow the ISS and the exact location of the astronaut shukla in the sky in real time.”

Most Kalash students come from surrounding villages and small towns. Many are first generation learners of low -income families. Palit notes that many students, especially those who are not big cities, think that a career in science is out of their reach.

“But it is at this point that I remind them that the space program of India was born in a village,” he said, explaining that the first rocket in India was launched from a sleeping fisherman village, Thumba, Kerala, in 1963.