Hyderabad: GITAMites bag first prize

Hyderabad: GITAM Deemed-to-be University, Hyderabad Aerospace Engineering final year students K.Swarnashree and D.Sai Sahiti bagged first prize from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, SHAR, ISRO, Sriharikota during World Space Week-2019 celebrations. This event was held at Lakireddy Bali Reddy College of Engineering, Mylavaram, Vijayawada recently. They have presented a power point presentation on overview of 'Aerial Mars Surveyor: Entomopter' under the guidance of Md. Akhtar Khan, Assistant Professor, Aerospace Department, GITAM. About 600 students across the country took part in World Space Week-2019.

This idea was introduced by Robert C.Michelson and NASA has taken patent rights on it. It is an aerial mars surveyor to be sent on Mars very soon and is yet at development stage. The Entomopter is propelled by a pair of flapping wings driven by a Reciprocating Chemical Muscle (RCM) which is capable of generating autonomic wing beating from a chemical energy source without an ignition source, combustion, or atmospheric oxygen. An Entomopter-based Mars Flyer holds promise of not only flying slowly over the Martian landscape, but also of serving as a multimode vehicle which could land, take samples, recharge, or communicate, and then take off to continue the survey mission. It even has the potential of returning to its launch point for refueling, downloading of data, or transferring of samples.

GITAM, Hyderabad Pro Vice-Chancellor Prof. N.Siva Prasad, School of Technology Principal Prof. Nuthalapati Seetharamaiah, Aerospace Engineering HoD Prof. A.Satyadevi have appreciated the duo on their achievement.