Hi teachers,
Please register your students for the Youth Rover Challenge being sponsored by The Mars Society. The website is youthrover.com
Pass this info on to anyone who you think may be interested, ex: Boy/Girl Scouts, after school programs, etc.
Here is a general overview:
The Youth Rover Challenge is a multi-tier robotics education development program that is hosted, sponsored and operated by The Mars Society. The program commenced on August 6th, 2013 to commemorate the one year anniversary of the landing of NASA’s Curiosity Rover.
YRC is a STEM related educational effort that is designed for schools and organizations with students or members in grades 5-12 to have the chance to build and compete at a global level with a LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0 based robotic rover and competition arena intended to simulate the surface of Mars. The sandbox where the robotic rover operates is intended to be replicated so participants can operate the competition locally at your school, home or club. Winners of the best place times will be invited to one of 4 events held in each region.
The Rover built for the competition is pre-designed accomplish specific experiments (tasks) similar to what Mars Rovers accomplish today on the surface of Mars and other harsh environments on remote places on Earth. The competition is operated on-site at your self-built sandbox and the final operation of the field tasks are then videotaped and sent to YRC for submission. Teams that have submitted videos that show the final operation of the rover completing the tasks under a time limit are then ranked against other teams.
The challenge and its operation is designed to prepare students for the The Mars Society University Rover Challenge that has operated successfully for the last 8 years directed by The Mars Society.
The program is lead and operated by its Program Director, Chuck McMurray, along with Nicole Willett, the Director of Education.
Sincerely,
Nicole Willett
Science Department, Benedictine Military School
Education Director, The Mars Society
@MarsEduNicole (Twitter)
Nicole Astro Willett (Facebook)
Mars Society Education Forum | Inspiration through education
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