IIT-B students set up society to study Mars

Srinivas Laxman TNN

Mumbai: A group of IIT Bombay students have embarked on a different type of stellar mission—to “launch” Indian students and others to Mars. Towards this end, they have formed The Mars Society, dedicated to the study of the red planet.

This comes at a time when the Indian space community has proposed 10 experiments related mainly to the Martian atmosphere during an Indian mission to Mars. This muchawaited expedition is now awaiting the formal ‘go’ from Isro, the space commission and the Union cabinet.

Dhruv Joshi, a final-year chemistry student at IIT-B who initiated the move to set up the society, said that when he was in Switzerland last year, he saw a presentation about the local chapter of The Mars Society. “I then decided to form a similar society in India as well,” he told TOI.

As a first step, a conference will be held at IIT-B about Mars. “Whomever I have spoken to about this society at IIT seems extremely excited and thrilled, especially the freshers,” Joshi added.

“The primary aim of the society is to encourage human exploration and colonization of Mars. We hope to recruit university students from technical and scientific disciplines, making use of their passion and creativity to develop a strong team of pioneers,” he said.

Jhonny Santosh Jha, a key player in IIT-B’s Pratham satellite project, explained that the India chapter of the society is now in the process of getting affiliated to the international chapter. “We just have a few members now, but are expanding,” he said, adding that the society will be organizing several Mars-related programmes in the days to come.

Many scientists at Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, an affiliate of Isro, are of the view that an Indian mission to Mars should be accorded precedence over the second lunar mission as India has already launched a successful mission to the moon.