NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge will host a virtual awards ceremony for its competing teams Friday, April 16, at 9 a.m. CDT. Media wishing to attend the ceremony should contact Janet Sudnik of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center by 5 p.m. on April 15.
The student competition – one of seven Artemis Student Challenges – tasks high school and college teams from around the world to design, build, and test a human-powered rover capable of traversing simulated terrain from the Moon, Mars, and other rocky planets. Along the way, teams are also required to complete scientific tasks, reflecting spacewalks that were completed during NASA’s Apollo Program and may be completed during NASA’s Artemis Program.
Although NASA will not be able to host teams in person this year, the students have gained significant value from the engineering, teamwork, and project tasks they have already completed.
Awards will be given for Overall Winner, Project Review, Social Media, Task Challenge, Videography, Ingenuity, Phoenix, Safety, and STEM Engagement. Teams should reach out to the HERC staff with any questions or for more details.
For more than 25 years, the annual NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge and its sponsors have encouraged student teams from the United States and around the world to push the limits of innovation and imagine what it will take to explore the Moon, Mars, and other worlds.
HERC is managed by the Office of STEM Engagement at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. The competition reflects the goals of the Artemis program, which seeks to put the first woman and first person of color on the Moon. NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement uses competitions to further the agency’s goal of encouraging students to pursue degrees and careers in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.
For more information about NASA’s Artemis Student Challenges, visit:
