Ann Marie Trotta
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1601
ann.marie.trotta@nasa.gov

Caroline McCall
MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
617-253-1682
cmccall5@mit.edu

MEDIA ADVISORY: M12-010

NASA JOINS MIT AND DARPA FOR OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD STUDENT ROBOTIC CHALLENGE

WASHINGTON -- NASA will join the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and
high school student teams from the U.S. and abroad for the third
annual Zero Robotics SPHERES Challenge on Monday, Jan. 23. The event
will take place on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass., and be
broadcast live on NASA Television from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. EST.

For the competition, NASA will upload software developed by high
school students onto Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient,
Experimental Satellites (SPHERES), which are bowling ball-sized
spherical satellites aboard the International Space Station. The top
27 teams from previous competitions will have their code sent Monday
to the space station, where an astronaut will command the satellites
to execute the teams' flight program. During a simulated mission, the
teams will complete a special challenge inspired by future satellite
technologies, such as formation flight and close proximity
operations.

Student finalists will be able to see their flight program live in the
televised finals. The team with the highest software performance over
several rounds of the competition will win the challenge. The winning
team will be awarded certificates and a SPHERES flight patch that was
flown to the space station.

News media wishing to cover this event must contact Caroline McCall at
MIT (cmccall5@mit.edu or 617-253-1682) by 2 p.m. EST on Friday, Jan
20. NASA officials and members of the astronaut corps will be
available to speak with news media after the competition.

In addition to their use in this competition, the satellites are used
inside the space station to conduct formation flight maneuvers for
spacecraft guidance navigation, control and docking. The three
separate satellites that make up SPHERES fly in formation inside the
space station's cabin. The satellites provide opportunities to test a
wide range of hardware and software at an affordable cost.

The SPHERES National Laboratory Facility on the station is operated
and maintained by NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

For more about the Zero Robotics program, visit:



For more information about SPHERES, visit:



For NASA TV schedule and video streaming information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

For more information about the space station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station