Chandrayaan 2: Inspiring The Future
The presence of ISRO on social media and the story of Chandrayaan 2 has affected the people across the country, big and small.
Mission Chandrayaan 2 has been the ‘apple of every Indian’s eye’ for the last 2 months. An extraordinary story of Indian scientists. We have proved once again that we are no less than all other space invaders. And we feel proud of it. But the best part of this mission was that a large number of people including children got deeply involved in this whole process. Witblox, a Mumbai based children robotics startup came up with an amazing idea. With a community spread well across the country they came up with a plan to build a moon rover as their bi-monthly challenge for their community members who are mostly school children. The excitement of ISRO’s moon mission was so encouraging that children immediately took up the challenge and came up with their own moon rovers. Below is the challenge video from the witblox team which they published on 6th September 2019, a day before the official Chandrayaan 2 landing on the moon.
Within 24 hours witblox maker Rakesh Malviya, age 15 from Bangalore came up with his own moon rover and uploaded his challenge video on youtube.
This is probably for the first time India has witnessed space science so closely. Children across the country are super excited about the moon mission and now they want to know more about the space which has been their favourite subject of interest & curiosity across all age groups. Though the Vikram Lander of Chandrayaan 2 lost its contact at the last stage of landing our scientists at ISRO are still hopeful that we will establish communication and release the rover from the lander for a surface to surface inspection. Children are natural learners and we must allow them to learn out of their curiosity. Witblox, in this case, is doing exactly that, making most out of the momentum and encouraging children to do things beyond their regular ability. A child needs confidence more than the marks, they need to experience more than to memorize. As parents, we must make sure that our children grow as happy learners but not rote learners.
One of the strongest messages ISRO gave to this country is that ‘nothing is impossible and we must not lose hope. There is always a winning chance hidden within your efforts, so keep trying. There is no such word as ‘failure’ in science, it is just that we need to find another way as this didn’t work out well. And till then just keep trying.’
