Day long knowledge sessions for school students on Dec 13 under Tata Steel Young Astronomer Talent Search

Bhubaneswar, Dec 11: Tata Steel in collaboration with Pathani Samanta Planetarium of Science and Technology Department, has been conducting the “Young Astronomer Talent Search” (YATS) for the school children of the State since 2007 with an aim to identify and encourage the talents of school children in the field of astronomy and space science and to popularize the great contributions of the legendary astronomer of the state, Pathani Samanta. As part of YATS 2020 celebrations, on 13th December 2020 several programmes will be conducted on the Digital platform for high school students of Odisha to mark the 185th Birth Anniversary of Pathani Samanta, the legendary Astronomer of Odisha. There will be a daylong knowledge workshops and interactive sessions with experts in the field of astronomy and space sciences for school students. The sessions will include a workshop by Dr. Subhendu Patnaik, Deputy Director (Technical), Pathani Samanta Planetarium, on Instruments of Pathani Samanta, an Interactive session with members of Team VSLV (VSSUT Satellite Launching Vehicle)of Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology (VSSUT), Burla on Creating the future- Rocket Engineers of the 21st Century and an interactive session with the Guest Speaker Vishal LathaBalakumar, Mission Specialist from Dhruva Space Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad. There will also be a show on astronomy. Students will receive e-certificates for participating in the various sessions. The students can participate in the sessions by joining through the link: https://bit.ly/TataSteelYATS2020 For the ceremonial closing function, the Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has kindly consented to join as the Chief Guest. As part of YATS, a state-wide competition used to be organized all these years with the finals at Bhubaneswar on 13th December. The programme has been gaining in popularity since its launch and, last year, around 62,000 students representing 300 schools from across all 30 districts in the State took part in the programme. More than two lakh young science enthusiasts of the state have participated in YATS in the last 14 years and 160 winning students had the opportunity to visit various facilities of ISRO in India. However, this year, due to the prevailing COVID pandemic, the competition could not be conducted as in earlier years owing to contact norms.