Category Archives: Education

Contests and Games, Education

Puerto Rico teams win college & high school NASA moonbuggy races

NASA’s 20th Great Moonbuggy Race took place the past few days at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. There were 89 teams involving over 600 high school and college students competing. The winners were announced yesterday:

Puerto Rico Teams Take Top Spots at 20th NASA Great Moonbuggy Race

NASA today declared the winners of the 20th NASA Great Moonbuggy Race at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. Team 1 from Teodoro Aguilar Mora Vocational High School of Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, won first place in the high school division; racers from the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao claimed the college-division trophy.

The winning teams outraced more than 89 teams from 23 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, India, Germany, Mexico and Russia. Approximately 600 student drivers, engineers and mechanics — plus their team advisors and cheering sections — gathered April 26-27 for the 20th “space race.”

Organized by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the race challenges students to design, build and race lightweight, human-powered buggies. Traversing the grueling half-mile course, which simulates the cratered lunar surface, race teams face many of the same engineering challenges dealt with by Apollo-era lunar rover developers at the Marshall Center in the late 1960s. The winning teams post the fastest vehicle assembly and race times in their divisions, with the fewest on-course penalties.

The team from Teodoro Aguilar Mora Vocational High School, in its third year in the competition, finished the half-mile course in 3 minutes, 24 seconds. The University of Puerto Rico at Humacao, who won second place in the college division in the 2012 race, brought home a first-place win, finishing in 3 minutes, 32 seconds.

A team from Teodoro Aguilar Mora Vocational High School competes in the 2013 NASA Great Moonbuggy Race.
Team 1 from Teodoro Aguilar Mora Vocational High School
won first place in the high school division. (NASA/MSFC)

Finishing in second place this year in the high school division was Jupiter High School Team 1 of Jupiter, Fla. In third place was Jupiter High School Team 2.

International Space Education Institute/Moscow Aviation University “Team Russia” of Moscow won second place in the college division; and Middle Tennessee State University of Murfreesboro took home third place.

Race organizers presented both first-place winners with trophies depicting NASA’s original lunar rover. Sponsor SAIC of Huntsville provided every participating moonbuggy team with a commemorative plaque. Sponsor Lockheed Martin Corp. of Huntsville presented the first-place high school and college teams with cash awards of $3,000 each.

Individuals on the winning teams also received commemorative medals and other prizes. (For a complete list of additional awards for design, most improved and spirit, see below.)

The race is inspired by the original lunar rover, first piloted across the moon’s surface in the early 1970s during the Apollo 15 mission, and used in the subsequent Apollo 16 and 17 missions. Eight college teams participated in the first NASA Great Moonbuggy Race in 1994. The race was expanded in 1996 to include high school teams, and student participation has swelled each year since.

A team from University of Puerto Rico at Humacao competes in the 2013 NASA Great Moonbuggy Race
The University of Puerto Rico at Humacao claimed
first place in the college division. (NASA/MSFC)

NASA’s Great Moonbuggy Race has been hosted by the U.S. Space & Rocket Center since 1996. Major corporate sponsors for the race are Lockheed Martin Corporation, The Boeing Company, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Aerojet and Jacobs Engineering ESSSA Group, all with operations in Huntsville.

For more information about the race, visit http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov

For information about other NASA education programs, visit http://www.nasa.gov/education

NASA’s 20th Great Moonbuggy Race
ADDITIONAL AWARDS AND PRIZES

Neil Armstrong Best Design Award (for solving engineering problems associated with lunar travel):
Academy of Arts, Careers & Technology in Reno, Nev.
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in Carbondale, Ill.

Featherweight Award (for the lightest buggy on the track):
Escuela Superior Rafaelina E. Labron Flores in Patillas, Puerto Rico
Purdue University Calumet Team 1 in Hammond, Ind.

AIAA Telemetry and Electronics Award (for the most innovative onboard data-gathering and delivery system):
Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management & Engineering in Maharashtra, India

Frank Joe Sexton Memorial Pit Crew Award (for ingenuity and persistence in overcoming problems during the race. Sexton, a NASA welder who mentored numerous welders and engineers among the Marshall workforce, worked on the original lunar rover and numerous other space vehicles until his death in 2000):
Fairhope High School Team 1 and Team 2 in Fairhope, Ala.
Texas A&M University-Kingsville in Kingsville, Texas

Crash and Burn Award (for the team that endures the most spectacular vehicle breakdown):
Bevill State Community College Team 1 in Sumiton, Ala.

Spirit Award (for overall team energy, enthusiasm and camaraderie):
Petra Mercado High School in Humacao, Puerto Rico

Rookie Award (for fastest course completion by a new race team):
Escuela Superior Rafaelina E. Labron Flores in Patillas, Puerto Rico
North Dakota State University in Fargo

Most Improved Award (for the most dramatically improved engineering and performance):
Huntsville Center for Technology Team 1 in Huntsville, Ala.
Middle Tennessee State University Team 1 in Murfreesboro

Best Report Award (technical documentation of the equipment and procedures used in design, build, test and the results obtained):
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

System Safety Award
University of Alabama in Huntsville

Lunartic Award (presented by AIAA to the team in each division that wins the Moon Bowl, a lunar science quiz):
New Britain High School in New Britain, Conn.
Accurate Institute of Management & Technology in Uttar Pradesh, India

Best Question of the Rover Pioneers Award (for best question asked during an April 26 event with members of the original lunar rover team):
Cape Girardeau Career & Tech Center in Cape Girardeau, Mo. — Husan Wadi

A team from Middle Tennessee State University of Murfreesboro competes in the 2013 NASA Great Moonbuggy Race.
Middle Tennessee State University Team 1 won
third place in the college division. (NASA/MSFC)

Contests and Games, Education, Space Systems

The Great Moonbuggy Race attracts several hundred competitors

NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center this week will host the 20th Annual Great Moonbuggy Race ®, April 25 – 27, 2013: NASA’s Great Moonbuggy Race draws international field of 600 competitors to Huntsville – al.com

Updates will be posted at NASA Marshall Center (MOONBUGGYRACE) on Twitter.

Here is a video from last year’s event:

 

Activism, Education, Space Science

Videos: Planetary Society event at IAA Planetary Defense Conf.

On Wednesday of last week’s 2013 IAA Planetary Defense Conference held at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff., the Planetary Society organized a public event. It was hosted by Bill Nye the Science Guy and Planetary Society CEO and included Geoff Notkin and Steve Arnold, the  Science Channel’s Meteorite Men. Below are videos of the event

Part 1:

What a night! More than 900 people gathered at Northern Arizona University on April 17, 2013 to celebrate science and people who have dedicated themselves to saving humanity from a killer asteroid. Master of Ceremonies Bruce Betts, the Planetary Society’s Director of Projects, gets the evening started, and is then joined by Planetary Radio host Mat Kaplan for a raucous What’s Up! recording session.

Part 2:

The 2013 PDC public event welcomes the co-star of the Science Channel’s popular reality show to the Northern Arizona University stage. Notkin describes his worldwide search for space rocks, and why they fascinate him.

Part 3:

The Planetary Society’s Director of Projects served as MC for the exciting public event at this year’s PDC. It was the perfect venue for Bruce to announce the winners in the latest round of Shoemaker Near Earth Object grants from the Society. These awards enable dedicated amateur astronomers and smaller professional observatories to vastly improve their ability to discover and track asteroids and comets that pose a threat to Earth.

Part 4:

The Planetary Society’s CEO was a wildly popular speaker at the PDC public event on April 17, 2013. Here’s his presentation to over 900 fans on the campus of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff

Part 5:

Moderator Mat Kaplan of Planetary Radio leads a lively and inspiring conversation in the grand finale of the PDC public event. Four outstanding young leaders in the planetary defense community join Bill and Mat on stage:

-Flight Dynamics Engineer Brent Barbee of the Goddard Space Flight Center
-NEOWISE Principal Investigator Amy Mainzer of JPL
-Applied Physics Research Scientist Cathy Plesko of Los Alamos National Lab
-Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy David Trilling of NAU

Amateur/Student Satellite, Education

Virginia elementary/middle school is building a Cubesat

The low cost CubeSat approach to satellite design is growing rapidly in popularity and over 75 Cubesats have reached space already. Most of these have come from colleges, universities and small companies. Now even a K-8 school is building one: Young students aim to be among first to launch small satellite – SlashGear.

Students at St. Thomas More Cathedral School in Arlington, VA are aiming to be a part of a milestone. The school is looking to become the first K-8 school to launch a “CubeSat” satellite into space. The proposed satellite that the students will build would be four inches long in all directions and would weigh around three pounds.

The project has to be approved by NASA, but if the school gets clearance, the satellite will have a planned launch date sometime later in 2014. The CubeSat satellite that St. Thomas More students have planned will be designed to take photographs and temperature readings, and have them beamed back to the school on Earth.

Contests and Games, Education, Space participation

Int. Space Apps Challenge + Robonaut 2 Challenge + A need for big challenges too

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The International Space Apps Challenge is underway this weekend.

The International Space Apps Challenge is an international mass collaboration focused on space exploration that takes place over 48-hours in cities around the world. The event embraces collaborative problem solving with a goal of producing relevant open-source solutions to address global needs applicable to both life on Earth and life in space. NASA is leading this global collaboration along with a number of additional government collaborators and 100+ local partner organizations.

See the 50 challenges here.  And the locations around the world where the teams are competing.

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NASA Robonaut Challenge is also happening this month. It challenges programmers to code a couple of particularly useful tasks for the humanoid-like Robonaut 2 on the ISS.

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Ed Wright endorses the modest sized challenge competitions like those above but says NASA should also continue to support important major challenges with big prizes as they did with the Lunar Lander Challenge competition: Robonaut Programming Challenge – CitizensInSpace.org