Robots go head to head, 250 miles above Earth
On Monday, high school students from across the country assembled in a lecture hall at MIT, patiently awaiting a call from NASA. For four months, these students worked in teams as part of MIT’s Zero Robotics Challenge, a competition in which high school students program small robots to fly aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The robots, named SPHERES, were originally conceived and built by students in MIT’s Space Systems Laboratory. These robots — roughly the size and shape of a basketball — run on compressed gas, and can be programmed to spin, revolve, hover and navigate through the air. In 2006, astronauts brought several of them aboard the ISS; a few years later, astronaut Greg Chamitoff PhD ’92 helped launch the Zero Robotics Challenge, making the robots accessible to high school students. Chamitoff was on hand Monday, along with several colleagues who served as mentors during the challenge: former...