High school teams compete in NASA’s Rover Challenge in Huntsville

NASA held its Rover Challenge event in Huntsville, Alabama this weekend: The 2015 NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge Rolls to a Start – NASA

2014 NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge Race (NASA, 04/11-12, 2014)

This competitive international design challenge boasts 95 registered university/college and high school teams, hailing from 18 states, Puerto Rico and from as far away as Mexico, Germany, India and Russia. Each team has spent months designing, building and testing their rovers, all for this moment…to roll into the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to defend their crowns or usurp the hierarchy of previous winners.

Rover Challenge requires student teams to design, construct, test and race human-powered rovers through an obstacle course simulating terrain potentially found on distant planets, asteroids or moons. Teams race against the clock to finish the course with the fastest times, vying for prizes in competitive divisions. The event concludes with an awards ceremony where corporate sponsors will present awards for best design, rookie team and other awards and accomplishments.

The nearly three-quarter-mile-long obstacle course will have teams racing and maneuvering in, through and around full-size exhibits of rockets, space vehicles and extra-terrestrial terrain on display at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center– the official visitor center of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. 

Here’s a report on the event: Racing rovers under the space shuttle, climbing Martian hills, and navigating moon rocks. It’s racing in the Rocket City. – AL.com

And a video from Reuters: