{"id":4820,"date":"2014-07-15T18:38:05","date_gmt":"2014-07-15T13:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/?p=4820"},"modified":"2014-07-15T18:38:05","modified_gmt":"2014-07-15T13:08:05","slug":"iit-b-student-team-sets-mars-expedition-australian-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/iit-b-student-team-sets-mars-expedition-australian-desert\/","title":{"rendered":"IIT-B Student Team Sets Out on a Mars Expedition in an Australian Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Artist_s_impression_of_Mars_node_full_image_2.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4821 aligncenter\" title=\"Mars Expedition in Australia by IIT-Bombay Student Team\" alt=\"Mars Expedition in Australia by IIT-Bombay Student Team\" src=\"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Artist_s_impression_of_Mars_node_full_image_2.jpg\" width=\"700\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Seven students of IIT-Bombay, from different academic streams, have turned into astronauts momentarily, wearing space suits and living and working in a simulated Martian environment in a remote desert in Australia.<br \/>\nThese students belong to the Mars Society of India, launched at the Nehru Centre in 2012. This is an initiative by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/top-engineering-colleges\/iit-bombay\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">IIT-Bombay <\/a>and the official Indian chapter of the US-based Mars Society.<\/p>\n<p>The Martian experience which began on July 7 will end on July 20. It is a collaborative exercise by IIT-Bombay, Mars Society of Australia and Saber Astronautics which is an Australian organization dealing in space technology. The Australian government funds Saber Astronautics to operate the joint Australia-India space exploration programme.<\/p>\n<p>The team is at an isolated location called Arkaroola in Australia&#8217;s northern Flinders region. The place was chosen because it effectively simulates a Martian environment. The study also includes geology and astrobiology in a Martian analogue environment.<br \/>\nDhruv Joshi, a former IIT-Bombay student and the Society&#8217;s main founder explained that the purpose of the simulation is to validate the performance of the rover made by the team. Joshi said, &#8220;We are constantly interacting with the scientists and evaluating the Martian rover designed and made by the team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He also added that the team is staying on-site which is a desert giving it a real feel of Mars. Joshi said, &#8220;Everything seems to be going well. The team is giving us regular updates.\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d Talking about the team&#8217;s compatibility to ensure success of the mission, he said seven of them have worked together in the past and get along well. The exercise involved monitoring of an astronaut&#8217;s heartbeat, communication coordination and position logging using GPS with the other astronauts.<br \/>\nThe team&#8217;s Day One diary speaks of &#8220;extraordinary geological areas in Australia spanning nearly 1.8 billion years of history&#8221;.<br \/>\nA different entry says that one of the places reminded them of the landing site of Nasa&#8217;s Curiosity rover at Gale Crater on Mars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seven students of IIT-Bombay, from different academic streams, have turned into astronauts momentarily, wearing space suits and living and working in a simulated Martian environment in a remote desert in Australia. These students belong to the Mars Society of India, launched at the Nehru Centre in 2012. This is an initiative by IIT-Bombay and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}