NASA Opens Registration for Annual Great Moonbuggy Race
NASA is challenging student inventors to gear up for the
agency's 19th annual Great Moonbuggy Race. Registration is open for
the engineering design and racing contest set to culminate in a
two-day event in Huntsville, AL, on April 13-14, 2012.
Participating high schools, colleges and universities may register
up to two teams and two vehicles. Registration for U.S. teams
closes February 10. International registration closes January
9.
The race is organized annually by NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center and held at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, both in
Huntsville. Since 1994, NASA has challenged student teams to build
and race human-powered rovers of their own design. These fast,
lightweight moonbuggies address many of the same engineering
challenges overcome by Apollo-era lunar rover developers at
Marshall in the late 1960s. Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and
James Irwin drove the first rover on the moon's surface on July 31,
1971. Two more rovers followed during the Apollo 16 and 17 missions
in 1972, expanding astronauts' reach surface and permitting greater
focus on scientific exploration.
As they prepare for the race, student teams carry on that
tradition of engineering ingenuity, competing to post the fastest
vehicle assembly and race times in their divisions, while incurring
the fewest penalties.
The rocket center's challenging, looping, curving half-mile
course of gravel embankments, sand pits and obstacles mimics lunar
craters and ancient, fossilized lava flows. The course gives racers
a realistic moon-traversing experience -- minus the airlessness and
weightlessness. Prizes are awarded to the three teams in each
division with the fastest final times. NASA and industry sponsors
present additional awards for engineering ingenuity, team spirit
and overcoming unique challenges -- such as the race weekend's most
memorable crash.
Teams from Puerto Rico won the top trophies in 2011. Teodoro
Aguilar Mora Vocational High School of Yabucoa won first place in
the high school division with a best time of 3 minutes, 18 seconds
-- just one second over the course record. The University of Puerto
Rico in Humacao, the only school to enter a moonbuggy every year
since the race's start in 1994, posted a best time of 3 minutes, 41
seconds to win the college division for the second straight
year.
Participation in the race increased from just eight college
teams in 1994 -- the high school division was added two years later
-- to more than 70 high school and college national and
international teams in 2011. (Image Courtesy NASA)