Indian student groups win space explorers challenge

Two Indian student groups have won NASA's 2022 Human Exploration Rover Challenge, which aims to identify a new generation of potential space explorers.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced the challenge on April 29 during a virtual awards ceremony, which included 91 teams from 58 colleges and 33 high schools.

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School from Punjab was the winner of the STEM Engagement Award in the High School division. The team from Vellore Institute of Technology in Tamil Nadu was declared the winner in the College/University division in the Social Media Award, a media release said.

The challenge required US and international student teams to design, engineer, and test a humanpowered rover on a course simulating terrain found on rocky bodies in the solar system. The teams also performed mission assignments, including sample retrievals and spectrographic analysis, while negotiating the course.

High school and college teams competed in multiple categories for design, documentation, and presentation, including the safety award, project review award, and many more.

"This year, students were asked to design a course that would mimic obstacles as if they were competing in Huntsville," Aundra Brooks-Davenport, activity lead for the challenge at Marshall Space

Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, said on Tuesday.

"Ensuring team safety was a major factor in developing the design of their own obstacles. We are excited about the virtual competition and the opportunity it provided our teams," Brooks-Davenport said.

The challenge is managed by NASA's Office of STEM Engagement. It uses challenges and competitions to further the agency's goal of encouraging students to pursue degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.