New Space and Tech

Zero Robotics Video Challenge

By Keith Cowing
April 8, 2013
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Kids are always told to reach for the stars. Now, NASA is literally giving them a chance to by providing middle and high school students with unprecedented access to the International Space Station and letting them write the programs that control state-of-the-art robots on the International Space Station — no Ph.D. in astrophysics required!

The NASA Tournament Laboratory, established by NASA and Harvard University, along with the enabling capabilities of the TopCoder community, have partnered with Tongal to hold a competition with cash prizes for winning ideas, pitches and promotional videos to inspire tomorrow’s scientists to see mathematics as more than just digits on a calculator, to further the study of outer space and to push the limits of human knowledge about the worlds (and the space) beyond our planet. The winning videos will help inspire middle and high school students to compete in the Zero Robotics Challenge, which is managed for NASA by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT.
To learn more and to participate in this challenge, visit http://tongal.com/project/ZeroRobotics.
Important dates for the Zero Robotics Video Challenge are:

June 19 – 26, 2012: Idea phase
July 2, 2012: Five winning ideas selected
July 2 – 16, 2012: Pitch phase
July 20, 2012: Five winning pitches selected
July 20, 2012 – Aug. 20, 2012: Video phase
Aug. 27, 2012: Seven winning videos delivered to NASA
Note: TopCoder is a registered trademark of TopCoder, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Tongal is a U.S. federal trademark held by Tongal, Inc.

Questions about the Zero Robotics Video Challenge should be directed to info@tongal.com.

SpaceRef co-founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.