In the early 1970s, NASA astronauts drove lunar rovers, also known as moonbuggies, four-wheeled vehicles for exploring the Moon, across the Moon's surface, during the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions. Approximately 100 teams of students from seven countries will rival for a top-three final at the annual NASA Great Moonbuggy Race, 13-14 April, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, USA. The racing buggies are based on the design of Apollo’s original lunar rovers.
More than 500 high school, college and university students from the USA, Canada, Germany, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Italy and India will race their specially crafted "moonbuggies." The students build their vehicles using trail bike tires, aluminum or composite-metal struts and parts. They design, build and test a sturdy, collapsible, lightweight vehicle that addresses engineering problems like those tackled by the lunar rover development team of NASA’s Apollo Program in the late 1960s. Preparation for the race begin during the fall semester.
"The annual NASA Great Moonbuggy Race is a unique and exciting way to get high school and college students involved in hands-on robotic design and operation," said Leland Melvin, NASA associate administrator for education. "They are working on a solution to a real exploration challenge faced by Apollo mission engineers in the 1960s. Today's student designers could be the engineers and robotics experts who will design a rover for future human exploration of Mars."
Moonbuggy participants are expected to represent an engineering test model, rather than a final production model. Each student team of six members is responsible for building its own buggy. Each moonbuggy is human-powered by two students from the team, over a half-mile simulated lunar terrain course that includes craters, rocks, lava, ridges, inclines and soil.
Top prizes are awarded to the three teams that post the fastest race times, which include assembly and penalty times.
The NASA Great Moonbuggy Race is one of many educational projects and initiatives the US space agency conducts each year, to attract and engage America's coming generation of scientists, engineers and explorers.
For further information about the competition, please visit the following link.
http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov
For information about other NASA education programs, please visit the following link.
http://www.nasa.gov/education
References
NASA
www.nasa.gov/
Wikipedia