Dorjee Khando
The event “First national space meet, Nepal” was chaired by Mr. Prabin Gyawali, and hosted by Mr. Anmol Mittal. The program was started by mr. Anmol Mittal describing about SGAC, Space Generation Congress, 7th space generation fusion forum, 3rd SGX event. They are planning to conduct Space generation week in Nepal soon. He also talked about space generation membership.
In the video conference by Dr. Bonnie B. Thurber, he presented about Electrostatics in Space Academy (EIS Academy), and showed small report from SOHO (Solar Heliospheric observatory).
The speaker Krishna Raj Adhikari, chairman of NESARC (Nepal scientific activities and research centre) talked about NESARC activities. He presented about water rocket competition organized by NESARC and Nepalese students participation in varieties of the competitions held annually. He added they also conduct APRSAF space education seminar. He showed that they have also been conducting poster competition working on CAN satellite. He showed various space camp programs done. And finally, he motivated the audience to be more enthusiastic in space technology sector and explained the vast scope in space science in Nepal.
Suresh Bhattarai, chairman, NASO introduced about SGAC and his journey into it. He said that how six students have shown their leadership in global space community via SGAC Nepal since 2009. His role as SGAC executive secretary in Nepal began from 2011-2013.
He shared the impact of Nepal’s active role in the network by talking about Emerging Space Leader (ESL) Grant. He added NASO and RAN are going to collaborate to form “space-robotics”.
Mr. Hari Ram Shrestha, Academician , NAST said Nepal has been developing in many technological aspect, but has not yet been able to have its own space satellite dedicated to space agency. He added NAST is hiring many engineering students for the R&D and working in space agency sector, and NAST is planning to launch a 1kg nanosatellite by May 2019. He added that Nepal is annually missing many opportunities in space sector because of not having our own space agency in Nepal.
Er. Bikash Gurung, Robotics Association of Nepal said they have started robotics engineer to work in space. He added, with NASO, they are working to organize national CAN-SAT competition. RAN is connected with ICIMOD to empower girls with Geographical Information System (GIS). RAN has initiated Yantra Space event where they worked on the concept of sending robots to Mars. RAN is also planning to be technical partner with the space agency program to be organized in the future.
Er. Uday Krishna Shrestha, worked as Radio Engineer in Radio Nepal. He said government has fixed budget for the development of space agency and communication sector, but enough effort has not been made for the mobilization of financial resources allocated by the government.
