What: Nearly 90 student teams from 19 states, Puerto Rico and four other countries will converge on Huntsville, Ala., April 10-12 for the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge — a new student engineering design competition tied to NASA’s plans to explore destinations across the solar system in years to come.

The event challenges high school, college and university students to design, construct, test and race lightweight, human-powered rovers capable of performing in the demanding environments to be explored by future voyagers. The competition is designed to teach students to solve practical design and engineering problems and demonstrates NASA’s continuing commitment to inspire new generations of scientists, engineers, technicians and astronauts.

NASA will stream the two-day event live via UStream and NASA Television:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-msfc

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

Teams’ classmates, families and communities are encouraged to follow the race live on Twitter, where NASA will provide real-time updates throughout the race, including preliminary course times for each team and award notifications:

https://twitter.com/RoverChallenge

Additional social media coverage can be found on Facebook and Instagram:

https://www.facebook.com/roverchallenge

http://instagram.com/nasa_marshall

When: Teams arrive in Huntsville April 10 for on-site registration. They race April 11-12 — with nonstop coverage on UStream and NASA TV — from approximately 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. CDT. The weekend concludes with an awards ceremony at 5 p.m. CDT April 12 (to be streamed on UStream only).

Where:  U.S. Space & Rocket Center, One Tranquility Base, Huntsville, Ala.

For more event details, race rules, information on the course, contributors and photos from previous competitions, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/roverchallenge