Udupi: ‘Aerofest – 2009’, Aimed at Promoting Interest in Aviation among Youths, Begins at MIT

Report and Pics: Hemanath Padubidri
Daijiworld Media Network – Udupi (RD/SP)

Udupi, Oct 2: Manipal University (MU) registrar Dr G K Prabhu inaugurated ‘Aerofest – 2009’, at Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) auditorium, here on Thursday October 1 morning.  Aerofest – 2009 is being jointly organized by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), Bangalore and MIT, to promote interest in aviation amongst the youngsters. 

MIT director Dr Mishra, joint director R S Aithal, MIT staff A M Chincholkar and Giriraj of NAL, were present at the dais.

A one-day workshop on aerospace science and technologies will be held here on Friday October 2, which includes a series of lectures by scientists from NAL and an interactive session with the students.

An exhibition of NAL’s technologies showcasing recent contributions and achievements of the laboratory will be held from Thursday October 1 to Saturday October 3.  It will highlight NAL’s societal missions.  Some of the exhibits cover wind energy, power generation from solar ponds, weather forecasting, support to India’s space programmes, smart materials and structural health monitoring, corporate materials, design and development of small civil aircrafts.

‘Aerofest – 2009’ will conclude on Saturday October 3 with the flight demos by NAL’s developed Micro-Air Vehicles (MAV). 

NAL, a pioneer in Indian aerospace research and development, significantly helped the strategic organizations (DRDO, ISRO, DAE, Defense Services etc) in the country, to achieve success their mission mode projects, besides building up national technology strengths in the areas of civil aircraft design and development.