Winners have been announced for the MoonBots 2.0 : A Google Lunar X Prize Lego Mindstorms Challenge. The contest was open to student teams to design, program and build robots that would simulate the lunar missions which mirrored the Lunar X Prize.
Chanda Gonzales, Google Lunar X Prize Education Manager said that the X Prize Foundation was proud of the accomplishments by all student participants and how they inspired their communities in science and exploration. They were thrilled to see high levels of interest among younger audiences in MoonBots and the Google Lunar X Prize. This was a terrific opportunity for them to work on projects that could turn into future careers Gonzales added.
Of the seventy five participating teams the Grand winners were the Team LegoAces from Granville, OH while the second place went to Team Just Ducky from Woodbury, MN. Team Lunar Lords from Bellevue, WA came in third place in the competition.
Steven Canvin the community manager of Lego Mindstorms said that it was fantastic to see what efforts and energy the 20 finalist teams put into their outreach activities as part of the MoonBots 2.0 competition. He added that they had been amazing in connecting with organizations and companies working with space exploration, presenting in their communities and reaching broader groups through mass media.
Mr Canvin said that MoonBots 2.0 had been successful in attracting young budding scientists who have grown with the challenge, learned a lot in the process, built ingenious Lego Mindstorms robots, some for the first time, and taught others about their research. The future for space exploration and associated sciences looked very promising.