An NDSU team is among nearly 100 high school and college squads from around the world that will race during NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge April 17-18 at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Participating teams are from 15 states and Puerto Rico, as well as international teams from Mexico, Germany, India and Russia.

Hosted by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the challenge requires participating students to design rovers that can maneuver through an obstacle course simulating the terrain potentially found on distant planets, asteroids or moons. Teams vie for awards for best design, rookie team and other accomplishments.

"The object of the competition is to design and manufacture a two-person, human-powered vehicle that will race through a simulated extraterrestrial course consisting of 17 different obstacles," explained Joe Rogers, a senior in mechanical engineering from Crystal, Minnesota, noting the vehicle must be operated by a male and female student. "Each team has two opportunities on the course with the best time counting in the standings."

In addition to Rogers, the NDSU team includes mechanical engineering seniors Andrew Norris of Roseville, Minnesota; Amanda Sys of Minot, North Dakota; Nabin Karki, Kathmandu, Nepal; and Kartik Joon, Hisar, Haryana, India.

The NDSU vehicle was built by Rogers, Norris, Karki and Joon as a senior design project. Sys joined the group for the competition.

The team's faculty adviser is Ghodrat Karami, professor of mechanical engineering.

The course features lunar-type and Martian-themed obstacles, highlighting NASA’s journey to Mars and other deep space exploration destinations. The obstacles are carefully shaped to resemble craters, basins, boulders, ancient lava flows, crevasses and other obstacles. The course features simulated asteroid debris, with boulders from 5 to 15 inches across, an ancient stream bed filled with pebbles about six inches deep and erosion ruts and crevasses in varying widths and depths.

Rogers said the team wants to improve on NDSU's 2014 entry, which had two major failures on the embankment obstacle. "Our hope is to do better than last year's team," he said. "Obviously winning would be great, but beating last year's group and finishing the course would be considered a success for us."