To foster interest and awareness on space, science and technology in the country, the Department of Information Technology & Telecom(DITT) under the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) will organise Bhutan’s first Space Week next month.
The department has planned a series of activities spread across the space week.
The space week will start off with a seminar on Bhutan’s young space programmes and journey. And for students studying in higher secondary schools, a space quiz competition will be held for the selected ten teams from various schools to test their knowledge about space and win exciting prizes such as personal telescopes and robot car development kits among others. During a week-long program, there will also be a live demonstration of Bhutan’s first satellite Bhutan-1 ground station operation. In addition, various space-themed movies and documentaries will be screened to the people throughout the space week.
“First and foremost, the reason why we are launching Bhutan Space Week in 2020 is to commemorate the auspicious occasion of His Majesty The King’s 40th birth anniversary. And secondarily we are launching space week as an event targeted specifically to promote, educate and outreach about space, science and technology in Bhutan. With this Bhutan Space Week, we hope to aspire and encourage our young people to pursue STEM education and also show an interest in space science and technology,” said Yeshey Choden, an Engineer at DITT under MoIC.
Meanwhile, updating on Bhutan-1 Cubesat, the first satellite of Bhutan developed by four engineers, they said it is currently in orbit and passes over Bhutan three to four times a day for about five minutes in each pass. The satellite was released into orbit on 10th August 2018.
“Since then the three of us in Japan have been tracking the satellite from the ground station in Japan. And after coming back from Japan, even here in DITT, we have a ground station to track our satellite and we have been carrying out the operation of the satellite on a daily basis. So every day we receive signals from the satellite which gives us some critical information on the satellite which are mainly for scientific research purposes. Most of the data that we receive here indicate how the satellite is functioning on-orbit whether it is able to survive the harsh condition of the space environment. So these data will be used for research purposes and also for designing the future satellites of the country,” said Kiran Kumar Pradhan, the Deputy Executive Engineer at DITT under MoIC.
The department will launch the space week on 17th February.
Sonam Pem
