The Apogee English Press spoke to Saarthak Verma, the APOGEE coordinator of Team Anant, in order to learn about the club’s plans for the upcoming fest.

Saarthak mentioned that this year, Team Anant will be organizing two events: The first is called Arshtalks, in which several highly esteemed guest speakers from ISRO, DRDO, and various private enterprises and startups associated with the space technology are invited to BITS to interact with the student community. The second is a satellite building workshop, where interested participants will receive hands-on assistance from Team Anant members as they learn about satellites, their design and subsystems, and space missions in general.

Saarthak said that this was a significant cutback of events compared to the previous year, in which the Team organized other events, such as a planetarium and the International AstroAeroSpace Conclave, where ten space-tech companies exhibited prototypes or models that they had built. Saarthak stated this was motivated by primarily two reasons: the lack of expected footfall to the events and the burdensome workload in conducting them the previous year.

Saarthak elaborated that the satellite workshop event would be partially hands-on and partially didactic, particularly the parts of the workshop involving costly hardware unavailable in mass quantities. He emphasized that both the events being held this year were free of cost for all participants, and encouraged participation in them.

Team Anant, said Saarthak, began working for the fest in late January, by reaching out to potential guest speakers for Arshtalks. For the satellite building workshop, he stated that all involved members had received two weeks of training, and were familiar with the work involved. He explained how their participation in events such as CANSAT, the International Aerospace Conclave in Milan, the ISRO Immersion Challenge in IIIT Hyderabad, and the Defense Satellite Exhibition let the team cultivate a large contact base for Arshtalks.

Regarding ideation for fest events, Saarthak stated that Team Anant kept track of similar events in other colleges and took ideas pitched by club members into consideration while planning future events. Saarthak expressed appreciation to the CoSTAA for their consistent support of Team Anant throughout the lead-up to the fest.

To the GBM, Saarthak reiterated the accessible, free-of-charge, educational nature of Team Anant’s events and urged the GBM to attend them.