We are very excited to announce that we have 38 Teams registered in the MoonBots Challenge. There has been great interest from North America. Teams from Hawaii, California, Iowa, Ohio, Maryland, Maine, Massachusetts, Virginia, Texas, Florida, Montana, Indiana, Colorado, Georgia, New York, Wisconsin, Utah and Oregon have their team pictures and design logos posted online. We are also thrilled to see teams from across the globe registering: New South Wales- Australia, Warsaw- Poland, Karnal Haryana- India and West Haddon Northamptonshire- United Kingdom. Teams are also coming up with some pretty creative names: Lunarticks, Team Tater Tot and The Doshi Destroyers to name a few.
Age Requirement Lowered
The minimum age restriction was lowered this week from 13 to 9 years of age. The Sponsors and Partners of the MoonBots Challenge hope to see youth organizations and robotics clubs throughout the world join the challenge this coming week because of the age change.
FAQ added to MoonBots website
An FAQ was recently added to the MoonBots website. Here are a few questions that people have recently asked:
Is the challenge free? The answer is YES! It's totally free to join. The team just needs a computer, an internet connection, and some kind of digital camera or webcam.
Do we have to travel somewhere to be involved? The answer is NO. The challenge is viral. The Sponsors and Partners really wanted to have teams compete from all parts of the world and not be limited to travel restrictions.
What is the grand prize? A trip to Denmark to tour LEGO Headquarters.
Can I be a coach of more than one team? YES. However, each youth can only participate on one team.
For a complete list of questions, please visit the FAQ located in the About the Game Button on the MoonBots website.
We are very much looking forward to seeing other teams register. Continue to keep promoting!
Happy Friday, everyone! This week's Friday Fun Day activity was suggested by Chanda, who pointed out earlier this week in a blog post that it is National Teacher Appreciation Week. In honor of teachers that have touched our lives, we want to know, who was/were your favorite teacher(s) in school? We'd love to hear about who they are and how they influenced your life.
Will Pomerantz left a comment the other day that we'll re-post here to get this #FFD kickstarted:
Hear hear! Great teachers truly do change lives.
This is a good excuse to think back on the great teachers who have changed my own life. I'd probably list five or six off the top of my head: Mr. Cullinan from a High School English class, Maria Zuber from MIT's Earth and Planetary Science department, and Stephen Jay Gould, John Shaw, Dan Schrag, and Paul Hoffman from Harvard. I owe a great debt to all of them!
Leave your response here in the comments or @-reply us on Twitter!
Prizes in Government and Beyond: Peter Diamandis from XPrize and the White Houses' Tom Kalil - Case Foundation - This is one of the talks from the White House strategy session "Promoting Innovation: Prizes, Challenges and Open Grantmaking" that I mentioned here.
@unrocket: Different chunk of desert same dried out feeling. Got tripoli l1 and l2 certs at plaster city. Next stop control
Richard Garriott holds "Our Space" contest for UK students - Space for All
Students in NASA's launch competition - Space for All
Briefs: UK spaceflight contest; Advanced injectors project - RLV News
Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #17 - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration
NSF Funding Boost Rolled into America Competes Act - GenomeWeb Daily News:
The Subcommittee additions to the America Competes Act also include a Lipinski amendment to create a pilot program that would award cash prizes in any area of NSF-funded research, particularly challenging high-risk, high-reward studies that could help boost US competitiveness and generate awareness of the NSF.
The act would fund five such competitions through the end of FY2013, and the awards would range between $1 million and $3 million. The government would not have the rights to any intellectual property developed under these awards, but it would be able to negotiate for license agreements with the prize contestants.
Subcommittee Approves NSF Reauthorization to be Rolled into America COMPETES Act - SpaceRef has a press release from the House Science and Technology Subcommittee about this.
Starting today through Friday- May 7, communities will come together to recognize the great role teachers play in our children’s lives. There has been a long history of observing this week. Since the 1940s, students have been making thank you cards and bringing red apples to their teachers. In 1985, the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) officially established this week to be designated as National Teacher Appreciation Week. This week provides an opportunity for students to show appreciation to their past and current teachers for delivering quality education to them.
Teachers in public schools, chartered schools, colleges and after school programs influence youth and adults on a daily basis. Teaching is a great profession and the fact that teachers are shaping the lives of students should be acknowledged. Teachers are helping students develop skills that are empowering them to be our future scientists, engineers and mathematicians. The Google Lunar X PRIZE wants to thank teachers throughout the world for inspiring learning and providing early education experiences for future innovation.
Last Friday (4/30) we were thrilled to have 85 friends, both old and new, come to visit us at the X PRIZE office in Playa Vista, CA. Energetic Ignite talks, Anousheh's touching recollection of her experience in space, and throngs of interesting people who were excited to connect with each other all made for a fantastic evening. We certainly hope that our guests had as much fun as we did.
Here is the winning entry:
Moonbots, car, genomes
Teams vying for the X PRIZE
New discoveries!
Our runner up, who will receive an X PRIZE gift pack, is @VAXheadroom (loved this one too!):
Shining brilliantly,
Anousheh Ansari is.
Inspires us all!
Want more? Other fun Twaiku submissions!
from @vaxheadroom:
Moon prizes await
And a very cool book too!
Wish I could be there!
Alone in the night
Todd (the Moon) awaits new friends
This time, they're robots
Small box on the moon
HD camera ready
Beam those pictures home!
from @priesett:
Rocket assembly
Is much more enjoyable
By the light of Todd
from @chris_radcliff:
My barn has burned down
now I can see the moonbots
glad we sent them first
from @quarkspin:
Tiny rover bots
Crossing the lunar landscape
For fame and glory
X PRIZE teams compete
No boundary is too high
No detail too small
Since the initiation of MoonBots: A Google Lunar X PRIZE LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Challenge was launched on April 15th, we have had many inquiries as to who can register. Due to the great number of requests, the Sponsors of the MoonBots Challenge- X PRIZE Foundation and LEGO® have changed the minimum age required for team members from 13 to 9 years of age.
The challenge is still open to parent-child teams, school teams, after school programs and youth organizations. We require that each registered team have an adult mentor. Many of the existing registered teams have experience working with robots, which is great. The Sponsors and Promotional Partners of the MoonBots Challenge want the public to know that this not a requirement. If you have an interest in the Google Lunar X PRIZE race to the Moon, enjoy playing with LEGO sets and love robots; then this challenge is for you!
Additional Challenge Rules Amendments: Effective April 30, 2010
1. Live Mission Web Cast Challenge Period for Phase II has been reduced from 4 minutes to 3 minutes.
2. The minimum age required of all Team members has been changed from 13 to 9 years of age.
3. Wording has been changed to show more explicitly that the Judges will adhere to the criteria provided in the Challenge Rules.
4. Description of the Grand Prize has been altered to show more explicitly that winners must be accompanied at all times by a designated chaperone.
Please visit the MoonBots website for updates.
