Girl-Led Teams Win MoonBots Grand Prizes
Four
teams from three countries have won the
Google Lunar XPrize for Kids, also known as the MoonBots
Challenge, and for
the first time since the competition began in 2010, the majority of
team
members were girls.
The
competition sponsored by XPRIZE and Google
challenged teams of students between the ages of 8 and 17 to design,
create and
program their own lunar rovers.
The
winning teams are:
- Team
GalacTechs from Tustin, CA: Two girls and
two boys, aged 8 to 11, who imagined a future where people vacation at
a resort
on the moon;
- Linked
Lunas from Fort Lauderdale, FL: 9-year-old
twin sisters whose mission was based on a historical tale and
scientific theory
that the Earth once had "twin" moons that collided and merged into one;
- Mecaliks
from Cuautitlan Izcalli, Mexico: Three
girls ages 9 to 12, who were inspired by Mayan cultural beliefs that
time is
measured by lunar phases; and
- Moonshot
from Brooklyn, NY, and Naples, Italy:
Two boy cousins, 10 and 12, who live in different countries and share a
similar
interest in the moon.
"All
four grand prize winners were creative and
imaginative in the way they interpreted their moon tales," said Google
Lunar
XPRIZE Senior Director Chandra Gonzales.
The
competition, which began in April, drew 239
teams from 29 countries who each submitted a written or video entry
about what
inspires them about the moon. A panel of judges selected 30 teams and
gave them
each one of three platform systems (Lego Mindstorms EV3, Vex IQ or
Meccano Meccanoid
G15 KS) to build and program a simulated robotic mission based on the
moon tale
they submitted in the first round.
Their
final presentations were shown to judges
via live webcast.
All
four teams will receive expense-paid trips to
Japan to meet the adult teams competing for the $30-million Google
Lunar
XPrize, a contest to land a privately funded robot on the
moon, at their annual
Team Summit.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.