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| Get your Moonbuggy revved up because it’s NASA race time |
| by William Atkins | |
| Friday, 21 November 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 2 NASA has announced its 16th annual Great Moonbuggy Race, which is to be held on April 3-4, 2008 in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA hopes the high school and college contestants will build their moonbuggies out of the “right stuff.”NASA’s media release “Racers get ready! NASA’s Great Moonbuggy Registration Begins,” states that “NASA challenges high schools and colleges across the country and the world to design and build lightweight, human-powered moonbuggies” just like the “historic lunar rovers that carried Americans across the surface of the moon during the Apollo era.” The race was first performed at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1994. In that inaugural year eight teams participated. Since then, the 0.7-mile course has been built up with hills and craters just like astronauts might encounter on the Moon, along with being "... strewn with miscellaneous lunar-like obstacles distributed randomly over the course" including a "lunar crater area in which the life-size replica of the LEM is located." [MSFC/NASA] And, in 2008, hundreds of students from 46 high schools and colleges participated from seven U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada, India, and Germany. Each educational institution is allowed to participate with up to two moonbuggies. However, time is a-wastin' because the deadline for registration is February 1, 2009. To find out where to download the registration form, and other bits of rovering information, go to page two. |
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