Indian student selected for Astronautical meet

Port Blair, Sep11 : A student from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Kumar Vikram Singh has been chosen to represent the country under pre-degree category in the International Astronautical Congress scheduled to be held at Hyderabad from September 24 to 28.

Andaman and Nicobar Administration officials said here today that Vikram, a student of Government Model Senior Secondary School at Port Blair, was selected by the ISRO. Four students from the islands appeared for the final round of the Zonal level competition held at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Trivandrum on August 21.

Altogether 50 students would participate in the International meet as student delegates in various categories, including Pre-degree, Under graduate Science, Post graduate Science, Law graduates and Post graduate law. About 2000 delegates from 45 countries, including India, will participate in the congress.

Heads of seven leading space organisations - the NASA, Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos), European Space Agency, Japanese Space Agency, ISRO, French Space Agency and Chinese Space Agency would attend the congress.

''The space agencies shall be providing an overview of the current space programme and an insight into the future. The theme of the meet is Touching Humanity: Space for Improving Quality of Life,'' official sources said.

UNI