This coming week, Kennedy Space Center will be hosting its annual Robotic Mining competition. The competition showcases nearly 50 college and university teams from across the US who will compete for scholarships, launch invitations, certificates of participation, and school pride.
“The competition focuses on maneuvering mining robots over a simulated Mars terrain while excavating Martian [soil] and depositing it in a bin within 10 minutes. Team scores are based on a number of design and operation elements, including dust tolerance and dust projection, communications, vehicle mass, energy/power required, and autonomy.”
The competition will coincide with this weeks Atlas V rocket launch on May 20. It was recently announced that the Atlas V program will begin winding down, and be retired over the next five years. “Tory Bruno says he plans to retire the Atlas V at the end of the decade due to the rocket’s reliance on a politically unpalatable Russian RD-180 engine. This would make way for the company’s plans to design an all-new rocket, the Vulcan, to handle the spectrum of missions now supported by Atlas V and Delta IV, including the heavy variant.”
For more information about the Robotics Competition, click here. To read the full Aviation Week article about the Atlas V launch, click here.
If you are planning to visit the Space Coast and are in need of accommodations, give us a call at (321)-784-5046 or e-mail us at [email protected]!
