18-year-old Sataparna Mukherjee, an A-levels student (class XII in India) at St Judes School, has made her country proud in the field of Space Science, selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for its prestigious Goddard Internship Programme under the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). She is also the youngest Indian ever selected for a research project.
Mukherjee, who is from a village in Madhyamgram, Kumduni (30kms from Kolkata), after her final exams will be going to Oxford University, where she will pursue her graduation, post-graduation and PhD (as NASA faculty) in aerospace engineering at its London Astrobiology Centre.
A Times of India reported, Mukherjee bagged the top NASA scholarship with her amazing work on 'Black Hole Theory', in which she has written a paper on the subject proposing on how this could be used to create a 'Time Machine'.
Stating reason for her selection in NASA, Satarpana said that when she shared her paper on Black Hole Theory with the US space agency, it was greatly appreciated.
Under Internship Programme, she will work as a NASA employee and a researcher. Besides bearing all her expenses, NASA is also paying her a generous sum as honorarium. Sataparna is among five scholars chosen from across the world for NASA's prestigious programme.
