Participate
How it works
Everything you need to know, from
registering to the finale.
WAYPOINT 01 / ELIGIBILITY
Who can take part
- Students of classes 9 to 12, from any school in India
- Teams of 3 to 4 members
- Members may come from different schools, provided each has guardian consent
- Every team needs one facilitating teacher from a participating school
- Entry is free. There is no fee at any stage.
One student may belong to only one team. A school may enter
as many teams as it wishes.
The facilitating teacher
Every team is endorsed by a teacher. The teacher confirms the
students are genuinely enrolled and is our point of contact if we cannot
reach the team. The teacher needs no technical background and does not do
the building.
Facilitating teachers receive a certificate and are welcome
to attend every session. Several of the sessions are useful for classroom
teaching in their own right.
WAYPOINT 02 / THE BRIEF
Two uses, or it is not on theme
Space missions run on very little. Scarce power, no
resupply, no repair crew, harsh conditions. Everything has to work the
first time and keep working.
Those same constraints describe a lot of places on Earth. A
village clinic without reliable power. A farm without a technician
nearby. A water system nobody can service every week. This is why space
engineering keeps producing things we use down here, from water
recycling to low power sensing.
Your project must answer both halves. What would a
space mission use this for, and who does it help here on Earth? A team
that cannot answer both is not on theme, and it is the first thing the
judges check.
The test. Write both uses in one sentence
each. If the Earth use sounds forced, or the space use is decoration,
change the project now rather than in November.
Sustainability is a requirement, not a bonus
Every submission includes a resource budget: what it
consumes, what it is made of, and what happens to it at end of life. In
space this is survival engineering. On Earth it is the same discipline
under a different name. Teams that ignore it lose marks.
WAYPOINT 03 / TIMELINE
Key dates
Three of these are hard deadlines. Missing one removes a
team from the competition.
| Date | What happens |
|---|
| 18 Aug to 18 Oct | Registration open. A short interest form is enough to begin. |
| 5 September | Inauguration and first session |
| 6 Sept to 11 Oct | Session series. Each session sets one open problem. |
| 12 Oct to 23 Nov | Build phase, with mentor support. You can start as soon as you have a team and a problem. |
| 18 October | Registration, team confirmation and problem choice close. Member names, classes, facilitating teacher, guardian consent, and one page: which problem, the space use, the Earth use. |
| 26 October | Progress checkpoint. One photograph or a sixty second clip of work in progress. |
| 23 November | Final submission closes, 11:59 pm IST |
| 10 December | Results announced, finalists invited to Agra |
| 1 January 2027 | Grand Finale at DEI, Agra |
WAYPOINT 04 / THE SESSIONS
Eleven sessions, real problems to solve
Sessions run on weekends and are entirely online, so
regular classes are not disturbed. Speakers come from the Vikram
Sarabhai Space Centre, IIT Delhi, NCERT, the University of Houston,
Ben-Gurion University and industry.
Every session ends with one open ended problem
statement. These are not exercises with known answers. They are the
problems the speaker actually finds interesting, handed to you.
Separate training sessions cover the practical
skills you will need: electronics, edge AI and prototyping. Attend these
even if you already know the subject.
Attendance is not marked, and you may work on the problem
from any session you like.
See
the problem statements released so far.
WAYPOINT 05 / BUILDING
You do not need to own hardware to compete
Teams working in simulation are judged on exactly the same
footing as teams building physically. This is deliberate. A good idea
from a school with no components should beat a mediocre one from a
school with a full lab.
If your school has electronics, use them. Whatever you have
is enough: microcontrollers, sensors, motors, 3D printed parts,
cardboard and tape.
If your school has nothing, or does not have the parts your
idea needs, you can build and demonstrate your project entirely in
simulation. The training sessions cover how, and everything required is
free and runs in a browser.
Many good projects do both, simulating the part they cannot
build and physically building the part they can. Show us what works, and
be honest about what is simulated.
Keep a project log
Record what you tried each week: what worked, what failed,
what you changed. A photograph and three lines of text is enough. It
should take a few minutes.
This matters more than it sounds. It is how mentors see
where you are stuck without having to ask, it is how you meet the
October checkpoint, and judges read it. A team that documented three
failed approaches and explained why they abandoned them scores better
than one that appears to have got everything right first time.
Your team keeps its log in Logbook.
See how
to join and log your work.
WAYPOINT 06 / SUBMISSION
What you submit
Five items, due 23 November, 11:59 pm IST. The
limits are firm. Judges read every submission, and a team that respects
the limit is easier to reward.
| # | Item | Specification |
|---|
| 1 | Demonstration video | Three minutes maximum. Must show the project working, physically or in simulation. Phone footage is fine. |
| 2 | Slide deck | Six slides maximum, PDF. Problem, space use, Earth use, how it works, resource budget, what you would do next. |
| 3 | Resource budget | One page. Power draw, materials, approximate cost, end of life. |
| 4 | Code and design files | Include the circuit diagram. |
| 5 | AI use declaration | See below. Half a page is plenty. |
It does not have to be finished. We are
judging a working proof of concept, not a product. A prototype that does
one thing reliably beats an ambitious one that does nothing. If part of
it does not work, say so and explain what you learned. That is not a
weakness in a submission, it is engineering.
WAYPOINT 07 / JUDGING
How you are judged
| Criterion | Weight | What we look for |
|---|
| Dual use | 25 | Are both the space use and the Earth use real and clearly argued? |
| Working prototype | 25 | Does the core mechanism actually function, physically or in simulation? |
| Sustainability | 20 | Power, materials, lifecycle. Was it designed to last and to be repaired? |
| Originality | 15 | Is this your own thinking, and does it approach the problem in an interesting way? |
| Feasibility | 10 | Could this plausibly be built at scale for the people it is meant to serve? |
| Communication | 5 | Can a stranger understand it in three minutes? |
Your project log is read alongside
the submission and informs the originality and prototype scores.
WAYPOINT 08 / USING AI
AI tools are allowed and encouraged
They are part of how engineering is done now, and
pretending otherwise would only teach you to hide it.
There are two conditions. You stay in control,
meaning you understand what your project does and can explain any part
of it when asked. And you declare it honestly.
The declaration. In half a page, tell us which tools
you used, what you used them for, and one example of something the AI
suggested that you changed or rejected, and why.
A good declaration looks like this. "We
used an AI assistant to debug our sensor timing and to draft the first
version of the averaging function. It suggested a blocking delay in the
main loop, which stalled our motor control, so we rewrote it ourselves.
The circuit design and the enclosure are ours."
That paragraph tells a judge more than a transcript would,
and it takes two minutes. Do not attach full conversation logs.
Teams that show good judgement about where AI helped and
where it was wrong score higher than teams that avoided it. What
is penalised is a team that cannot explain their own project. Judges
will ask.
WAYPOINT 09 / THE FINALE
Grand Finale at Agra
Shortlisted teams present in person at Dayalbagh
Educational Institute, Agra, on 1 January 2027. Everything before
that runs online, so you can take part from anywhere in India.
Finalists are announced on 10 December. The Systems
Society of India covers travel for finalist teams. Every team must
be accompanied by their facilitating teacher or a guardian. Arrangements
for the accompanying adult are shared with the invitation.
Prizes worth one lakh rupees go to the top three
teams. Additional special category prizes are announced during the
session series.
WAYPOINT 10 / RULES
Rules
- The work must be the team's own. Building on open source is fine and expected. Credit it.
- You may not submit a project already entered in another competition before September 2026. Continuing your own earlier work is allowed if you declare it and show what is new.
- Teachers and mentors guide. They do not build, write code, or make the slides.
- Team composition is fixed after 18 October. A member may withdraw, but nobody may be added.
- Nothing dangerous. No mains voltage, no high power lasers, no chemicals or pressure vessels without a supervising teacher present. Safety issues disqualify.
- Deadlines are in IST and are firm. Submit early. The network will not be an accepted excuse.
- Organisers may use your project images and video for reporting and publicity. You keep ownership of everything you make.
- Judges' decisions are final.
WAYPOINT 11 / QUESTIONS
Questions
We have no electronics at our school. Can we still enter?
Yes. You can build and demonstrate your project
entirely in simulation, and it is judged identically. The training
sessions cover how.
Nobody on our team can code.
The training sessions start from the beginning. Teams
have won these competitions before with no prior experience.
Can our teacher help us build?
They can teach, question and unblock you. They cannot
build it for you. Judges can tell.
What if our project fails?
Submit it anyway with an honest account of what went
wrong. A well documented failure often scores above a vague success,
and you learn more.
Do all four of us have to come to Agra?
Only if your team is shortlisted, and travel is
covered. Details come with the invitation.
Can students from different schools form one team?
Yes, provided each student has guardian consent and
the team has one facilitating teacher.
Registration closes 18 October
A short interest form is all you need to begin. Team
details can be confirmed later.
REGISTER YOUR TEAM