Neel Mehta
Ninety-nine student teams from high schools and universities in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Brazil and other countries will participate in NASA’s three-day Human Exploration Rover Challenge that will kick off March 30 at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Alabama.
NASA said Wednesday the Marshall Space Flight Center will host the competition that will require student teams to design, construct, test and race rover vehicles on 17 obstacle courses that simulate terrain on Mars, moon and asteroids.
Some of the teams that will take part in the challenge are from North Dakota State University, Fairhope High School in Alabama and Puerto Rico-based Rafaelina E. Lebron Flores High School.
The contest will have the Drive Train Technical Challenge as an optional feature that seeks to facilitate the development of drive shafts, belts and direct drives designed to replace chains on exploration rovers.
Companies that will serve as the challenge’s major sponsors include Aerojet Rocketdyne, Boeing, Jacobs Engineering Group, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
Other corporate contributors to the event include Orbital ATK, Science Applications International Corp. and Teledyne Brown Engineering.
Click here to see the complete list of participating teams.
