NASA may sound like a huge legacy company, but hosts many competitions to attract students and fans from around the world and support potentially innovative ideas. One of these contests is the Annual Human Exploration Rover Challenge .
2019 was the 25th annual Rover Challenge, where groups of college students create a vehicle designed to traverse the simulated surface of another world, such as the lunar surface or other planets. The students were responsible for designing, testing and building technology that could propel a rover that could complete an obstacle course on a variety of terrains. The teams had six minutes to finish the course, which was more than a kilometer long and had 14 obstacles. Teams also had to complete challenges such as collecting a sample and deploying instruments.
KIET Group of Institution is proud to announce that Team Interstellars of SAE KIET particiapted in Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC) and through their dedication and hardwork secured the first position for the best design. #nasa #proud #first #sae #kiet #hardwork pic.twitter.com/9T3nsySMDV
— KIET Group Of Institutions (@OfKiet) 14 April 2019
The group of institutions KIET of Ghaziabad won the ‘AIAA Neil Armstrong Award for the best design’ as their rover met the performance requirements of the Rover Challenge.
The Lovely Professional University of Punjab received the ‘STEM Engagement Award’, congratulating their knowledge about rockets and other space-related issues.
Mukesh Patel School of Management and Technology Engineering of Mumbai was hooked with the ‘Frank Joe Sexton Memorial Memorial Pit Crew Award’ for showing ingenuity and persistence in solving problems during the race, and also the ‘ Award for the security challenge of the system.
The general winner in the secondary school segment was the International Space Education Institute in Leipzig, Germany, with 91 points, while the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez obtained the first place in the segment of the University, with a whopping 101 points.
More than 100 teams participated in the challenge from all over the world, including countries such as Bolivia, Bangladesh, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Germany, Mexico, Morocco and Peru. The event was also attended by the veteran American Indian astronaut Sunita Williams. NASA hopes that this challenge will inspire participants to become engineers to help design the next generation of space systems.