Registration will open Oct. 11, 2018, for student teams to participate in the 2019 NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge, organized by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The challenge, celebrating its 25th year, will take place April 12-13, 2019, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, also in Huntsville. Registration for international teams will close Dec. 13; U.S. team registration closes Jan. 17.
Rover Challenge continues the agency’s legacy of providing valuable experience to students who, someday, may be responsible for planning future space missions, including crewed missions to other worlds. Students from high schools, colleges and universities around the world design, engineer and test a human-powered rover. Once their rover is built, teams attempt to traverse a nearly three-quarter-mile course with grueling obstacles that simulate terrain found on Mars, as well as other planets, moons and asteroids throughout the solar system.
Guided by a theme of overcoming the problems of planetary exploration, the Human Exploration Rover Challenge implemented significant changes beginning in 2018. The event is no longer dominated by an all-out race across difficult terrain. Instead, the challenge now mimics the opportunities, challenges and decision-making that our future planetary explorers will face in interplanetary space.
“We are excited to celebrate 25 years of the Human Exploration Rover Challenge,” said Diedra Williams, education specialist in Marshall’s Academic Affairs Office. “Last year’s changes brought a whole new level of strategy and excitement to the challenge and we can’t wait to see what teams will come up with this year to improve their design to meet the new format.”
For questions regarding U.S. and international team registration, please contact MSFC-RoverChallenge2019@mail.nasa.gov.
For more information about NASA education, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/education
For more information about the 2019 Human Exploration Rover Challenge, visit: