Sunday, May 17, 2009

Student Space Prize Roundup - May 17, 2009

Briefs: Exp. Sounding Rocket Assoc.; Team America Rocketry Challenge - RLV News covers an organization that, among other things, runs the 4th Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition. SpaceX is a "major sponsor" of this competition, which is scheduled for June 25-26.

The post also covers the results from the 2009 Team America Rocketry Challenge. As noted, the winner of the post-TARC fly-off was a UK team from Royal Liberty School (the winners of UKAYRoC). Here's more about the TARC itself:

Wisconsin student 'rocketeers' win national contest - Madison West High School will represent U.S. in international fly-off today - Rocketry Planet (AIA press release)

For a brief bit of local flavor: Madison West students win national rocket competition - Wisconsin State Journal

top 20 teams (PDF) - Team America Rocketry Challenge

Team America Rocketry Challenge 2009 - Rocket Jones gives some background on the competition as well as an insider's view of the event.

Originally, the plan was for the winning entries for the 2009 Thacher Scholar Awards for secondary school students (grades 9-12) demonstrating the best use of geospatial technologies or data to study Earth to have been awarded by now. However,

Because of the high quality of the entries received for this year's contest, judging and selecting the winners is taking longer than planned. Winning entries will be posted by May 18.

As I'm posting, that's tomorrow. Here's the scope of the contest:

Eligible geospatial tools and data include satellite remote sensing, aerial photography, geographic information systems (GIS), and Global Positioning System (GPS).

Does anyone want to include imagery from suborbital rockets in that set?

A while ago I briefly mentioned the winners of the 2009 NASA/NSS Space Settlement Contest. Here's a post from the National Space Society blog with more information about the other winning entry: Prize-Winning Space Settlement Design

Another Construction Update... - MAVRIC (Mars Analog Vehicle for Robotic Inspection and Construction) - Mars Society University Rover Challenge team

Iowa State’s 2009 Mars rover is ready to roll - Iowa State University College of Engineering

OSURC Mars Rover - URC team from Oregon State University:
Announcement May 15 2009
Successfully tested remote operation in a large gravel parking lot. It was difficult to keep up with the rover, we will not have any speed problems in utah, this thing hauls!


No Boundaries (NASA/USA contest):
All mail entries must be postmarked by May 15, 2009, 11:59 p.m. and received no later than May 20, 2009.
A list of No Boundaries winners is expected June 6, 2009.