NASA, MIT, DARPA Host Fifth Annual Student Robotics Challenge Jan. 17<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nNASA will participate in the fifth annual Zero Robotics SPHERES Challenge Friday, Jan. 17, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus in Cambridge, Mass.<\/p>\n
The event will be broadcast live on NASA Television beginning at 7:30 a.m. EST.<\/p>\n
The agency will join in the event with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, MIT, the European Space Agency, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, IT consulting firm Appirio, and high school student teams from the United States and abroad.<\/p>\n
For the competition, NASA will upload software developed by high school students onto bowling ball-sized spherical satellites called Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES, which are currently aboard the International Space Station. From there, space station Expedition 38 Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Richard Mastracchio will command the satellites to execute the teams’ flight program.<\/p>\n
During a simulated mission, the teams will complete a special challenge called CosmoSPHERES, a competition in which students must program their satellites to alter a fictional comet\u2019s earthbound trajectory.<\/p>\n