16-year-old
Amritsar Girl Hissaa Kaur, a class 10th student of DAV Public School received a rare
opportunity to visit NASA after she topped the International Space Olympiad
(ISO) 2020. She scored 78.75 marks in International Space Olympiad (ISO) in the
preliminary, intermediate and final test collectively.
What is surprising
is the fact that not only is she the first student from India to secure this
position in the senior category, but also the one to achieve it with her own
hard work, without any coaching.
It was a ‘dream
comes true’ for her when she got the official confirmation. She wants to be an
astrophysicist. She competed with students from Singapore and Switzerland,
besides different parts of India, and bagged the first place.
“I got myself
registered in September 2019, but due to Covid-19 restrictions, the first-round
examination was pushed to January, followed by the second phase being conducted
in June and the final in August. I am eagerly waiting for the situation to get
favourable so that I could visit my dream destination, the NASA centre,” said
Hissaa.
Hissaa Kaur credited
her father Savrajinder Pal Singh, an engineer with the MC, Amritsar, and her
mother Kamalpreet Kaur, an English teacher in a government school, for her
success.
“Having an
engineering background, my father taught me the nuances of science and my
mother made sure that I get the best of knowledge in astronomy,” she added.
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/schools/amritsar-girl-bags-free-trip-to-nasa-
Dr. Gurdeep Kaur
Associate Professor
Sri Guru Nanak Dev Khalsa College
University of Delhi