**Bhubaneswar:** Tata Steel has targeted at least 50,000 school students from across Odisha as competitors for its flagship event Young Astronomer Talent Search (YATS) while celebrating its 10th Edition this year.
It has been decided to change the format of the competition this year to target more number of schools and students, engage with them at school levels and make the whole initiative attractive, interesting and educative for the students with the help of an activation partner.
The new format intends to focus schools of targeted districts which have been actively participating in YATS in the last few years.
For the YATS 10th Edition this year, Tata Steel has proposed on-the-spot essay competition for students of Standards 9th-10th and open quiz for students of Standards 7th-8th where essays will be evaluated by a selected panel of jury.
The topics of essays for the 10th Edition are “Building The Next Generation International Space Station”, “Space Tourism: Human Space-Flights And Their Future”, “The Future Of The Indian Space Programme: The Next Frontier” and “New Generation Telescopes: How To See The Unseen”.
During the on-the-spot competitions in the school, the event will entail engagement activities with the students showing short audio-visuals on Astronomy, putting informative panels, et al.
In essay competition, two winners from each school will be selected who will be evaluated at par with other school winners in their districts.
Top two entries from each district will be selected for the Grand Finale on December 13 this year here.
The top 20 winners of the finals will be subsequently taken for an exposure visit to an ISRO facility.
Started in 2007, YATS is being organised by Tata Steel in collaboration with the Pathani Samanta Planetarium here in a bid to pay tribute to the legendary astronomer of Odisha, Pathani Samanta, as well as promote his contributions in astronomy amongst students, identify talents of student in space science and provide the students with the platform to express their knowledge and talent through this initiative.
