Chennai students win NASA award

The project, ‘Photonics Odyssey’ or AakashNet, aims to bridge the digital divide in India by delivering high-speed, low-cost internet to the country’s most remote villages

- PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

A team of Chennai-based engineering students has beaten over 18,000 projects worldwide to win the “Most Inspirational” award at the NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2025.

Their project, “Photonics Odyssey” or AakashNet, aims to bridge the digital divide in India by delivering high-speed, low-cost internet to the country’s most remote villages.

“AakashNet conceptually adopts the working philosophy long demonstrated by ISRO,” Prasanth Gopalakrishnan, a second year electronics and communication engineering student of SRM Easwari Engineering College, told PTI.

‘At the NASA International Space Apps Challenge, one of the world’s largest annual global hackathons, the team’s submission made it to the top 10 projects, winning the ‘Most Inspirational’ award.

Launched in 2012, the challenge hopes to foster innovation using NASA’s free and open data from satellites, telescopes and missions and create solutions for Earth and space.