NASA gets ready for Great Moonbuggy Race

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., March 8 (UPI) -- More than 1,000 high school and college students are expected in Huntsville, Ala., this week for NASA's 17th annual Great Moonbuggy Race.

Student teams from 20 states, as well as Puerto Rico, Canada, Germany, Bangladesh, Serbia, India and Romania are expected to participate in the two-day race that begins Tuesday over rugged, moon-like terrain at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.

Space agency officials said the student teams must design, build and test a sturdy, collapsible, lightweight vehicle that addresses engineering problems similar to those encountered by the original Apollo-era lunar rover development team at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville during the late 1960s.

Top prizes are awarded to the three teams in both the high school and college/university divisions that post the fastest race times. A variety of other prizes are given by the race's corporate sponsors, including the Lockheed Martin Corp., The Boeing Co., Jacobs Engineering ESTS Group and the Northrop Grumman Corp.

A list of this year's competitors and other information are available at http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov/email.html.