Category Archives: Contests and Games

SEDS 2014 University Student Rocketry Challenge

SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space) is sponsoring the 2014 University Student Rocketry Challenge:

SEDS is pleased to announce the 2014 University Student Rocketry Challenge.  Now in it’s fourth year, this competition challenges university students to design, build, and launch a high-powered rocket that carries a 3 lb payload to an altitude of 10,000 feet in the quickest time possible.  Teams are also awarded points for developing a custom scientific payload or propulsion system.

There is no cost to enter the competition and the first place team will receive a prize of $1000.  Please see the links below for more information.

Official Rules

Team Roster Template

The deadline is Feb.28.2014 for submission of a letter of intent and a team roster.

Sci-Tech: Inspiring Conservation through Art – A Living Oceans Foundation challenge

Amy Heemsoth of the Living Oceans Foundation sent me this announcement:

Inspiring Conservation through Art

Do you love art? Love the reefs? Then please read on.

For this year’s Science without Borders® Challenge, we are asking high school students around the world to use their creativity and inspiration to design poster art following the theme ‘Protect Our Coral Reefs.’ The student’s artwork will portray an action that slows down the degradation of coral reefs.

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The Challenge was created to get students and teachers more involved and interested in ocean conservation through various forms of art. Last year’s contest was a video competition themed ‘How are we connected to the oceans?’ It was the first Challenge held by the Foundation.

The Foundation hopes that this contest will continue to inspire youth to become stewards of the environment in order to preserve, protect, and restore the world’s oceans, and aquatic resources – the overarching theme of the Foundation.

For more information regarding the Challenge and contest rules, please visit our website at www.livingoceansfoundation.org/resources/for-educators/gis/.

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Here is a video made by last year’s winner of the competition, which asked high school students to create a video to answer “the question, how are we all connected to the oceans? ” :

Space Pioneer – A game created by real world astronauts, scientists & architects.

A Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign opened today for the game Space Pioneer, which was created by a team that includes three cosmonauts:  Space Pioneer by Space Enigma Studios — Kickstarter

Our team consists of world famous astronauts, engineers, designers, programmers, artists and architects who allow us to construct a game that will be the most accurate virtual representation of our universe to date. Space Pioneer aims to be a game that is uncompromisingly entertaining and educational. Our game chiefly focuses on interstellar exploration; it is based on images and resources from the Hubble telescope, ESA/NASA, and numerous well known observatories. The player will be able to pilot a fully customizable spaceship into the vast regions of our universe and can colonize other planets beyond our solar system. In addition, he or she can research different scientifically accurate theories to upgrade their spaceship, build vast space stations and terra-form inhospitable planets.

The project is described in this video:

Video: GLXP team SpaceIl signs contract for propulsion system

The SpaceIL team in the  Google Lunar X PRIZE competition announced today that they have signed a contract for the propulsion system for their lunar spacecraft. Ronen Zilberstein, the SpaceIl Project Manager, gives a brief description of the propulsion plan:

Help DigitalGlobe select top earth observation image of 2014

The earth observation satellite company DigitalGlobe is holding a contest to selected their top image of the year: Vote For DigitalGlobe’s Best Satellite Photo Of The Year – Popular Science

Help Us Choose the Top Image of 2013

DigitalGlobe saw many changes in 2013, including our combination with GeoEye in February. The combination grew our constellation to five satellites, adding the capability to collect more than one billion square kilometers of imagery to our archive this year alone!

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Dunalley, Australia, Jan. 6, 2013 – fires, false color image (red = healthy vegetation)
Digital Globe Facebook

As 2013 comes to a close, we’re looking back in the archive and choosing our favorite images captured byIKONOS, QuickBird, WorldView-1, GeoEye-1 and WorldView-2. Our DigitalGlobe team members helped to narrow the image selections from trillions of pixels to 20 images. Now we’re looking to you to help us select the top image from these chosen 20.

Please join us in voting for DigitalGlobe’s third annual Top Commercial Satellite Image of the Year contest. To vote, simply go to DigitalGlobe’s Facebook page to see the Top Image Contest – 2013 Top 20 album. You can “like” as many images as you want, but only the five images with the most likes will make it to the final round. You have two weeks to vote, campaign for, and promote the images you want to see in the top five.

On December 17 we will announce the five images with the overall most “likes.” The images will be added to a new album, Top Image Contest – 2013 Top 5 album, where you can “like” your favorite image.

Want additional votes in this final round? Follow DigitalGlobe on TwitterPinterest, and Google+ to retweet, repin, and +1 your favorite images. We will announce the winning image of 2013 in early January 2014.

We want you to be the judge, so join the conversation and vote for the Top Image of 2013!