ATL Space Challenge 2021

• 11 Sep 2021

Why in News

Recently, NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) in collaboration with ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) and CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) has launched 'ATL Space Challenge 2021’.

• Earlier, the Union cabinet in June 2020 decided to open up the space sector for private sector participation, and cleared the creation of a new entity, Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe), to encourage private companies to use India’s space infrastructure.

Key Points

• About:
  
  • This is to ensure that students of classes 6 to 12 are given an open platform where they can innovate and enable themselves to solve digital age space technology problems.
  • Students from both ATL (Atal Tinkering Labs) and non-ATL schools can submit their entries in the space challenge. School teachers, ATL In-charges and mentors may support the student teams.
    
    • Under the ATL initiative, schools receive a grant for setting up such labs to encourage students to give shape to their ideas and come up with innovative experiments on their own in these laboratories.
  • It aligns with the World Space Week 2021 which is observed from 4^th -10^th October each year, to celebrate the contributions of space science and technology.
  • This comes against the backdrop of India’s push to move up in the Global Innovation Index (GII, released by the World Intellectual Property Organisation) rankings.
• Atal Innovation Mission:
  
  • AIM is Government of India’s flagship initiative to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country.
  • It’s objective is to develop new programmes and policies for fostering innovation in different sectors of the economy, provide platform and collaboration opportunities for different stakeholders, create awareness and create an umbrella structure to oversee the innovation ecosystem of the country.
  • Major Initiatives:
    
    • Atal Tinkering Labs: Creating problem solving mindset across schools in India.
    • Atal Incubation Centers: Fostering world class startups and adding a new dimension to the incubator model.
    • Atal New India Challenges: Fostering product innovations and aligning them to the needs of various sectors/ministries.
    • Mentor India Campaign: A national mentor network in collaboration with the public sector, corporates and institutions, to support all the initiatives of the mission.
    • Atal Community Innovation Center: To stimulate community centric innovation and ideas in the unserved /underserved regions of the country including Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
    • Atal Research and Innovation for Small Enterprises (ARISE): To stimulate innovation and research in the MSME industry.

Source: HT