Engineering students from the Academy of Arts, Careers and Technology recently designed and raced a man powered moon buggy at the international NASA Rover Challenge in Alabama.
The team of high school engineering students took third place in the high school division and won the NASA Systems Safety Award.
The rover is the creation from more than thirty students at AACT high schools.
Owen Schenk, one of the drivers of the rover, says this creation is a huge accomplishment for not only him, but for his entire team.
“Thanks to the rover and just all the awesome experiences we've had on it, I’ve actually learned a lot about just real world projects that a lot of students just don't get the opportunity to ever even think about doing,” says Schenk.
The moon buggy competed against more than 90 other teams in a race over on a half mile course that simulates the surface of Mars.
Dan Ruby, director of Fleischmann Planetarium, says one of the goals of the competition is to use educational student work to further NASA’s search for future employees.
“The point is to race and have fun and do really well, but for NASA the goal is to get students in the pipeline for science, technology, engineering and math and get them interested and prepared for future careers in space," says Ruby.
