Race to the moon! What it could be like? Not only astronauts however even high school students can answer this rolling-eyes question. Moon Mark, the entertainment and education company which will race around the Moon in 2021 has announced that two teams of students in its global Lunar Race Car Design Challenge (LRCDC) created technically valid designs, in just four weeks.
Team Atlas, from Buenos Aires, and Team Ilstar, from Shanghai, submitted designs that met or exceeded the technical specifications required to race on the Moon. Estimated cost per racer: about $50,000.
\”When we issued this last-minute challenge to students home-bound through the global pandemic, our goal was to provide a unique project centered on space commercialization,\” said Mary L. Hagy, Founder and CEO of Moon Mark.
These two teams' accomplishments are beyond praise. They validated 2021 competitors, who actually build the cars which will race. They've what it takes to achieve the defining moment of the generation.
\”If the designs could stand up to the rigorous testing required for Moon landing and operations, both of these vehicles could be built and raced around the lunar surface,\” said Trent Martin, Vice President of Aerospace Systems at Intuitive Machines, Moon Mark’s space partner.
Martin also served like a judge. \”The students demonstrated the ingenuity, innovation and problem-solving skills required to operate in space environments.\”
In the LRCDC, issued by Moon Mark in May 2021 for young adults home-bound by the pandemic, students were challenged to create a three-minute video, one per week for a month. The final video presented the designs for his or her lunar cars.
The LRCDC quickly drew 35 teams from 11 countries. The final six, from Argentina, Bolivia, China, Colombia, and the United States, were evaluated with a corps of 25 judges in aerospace, technology, engineering, motorsports, and entrepreneurism, from around the world.
The teams earned prizes of $1,000 each for donation to their charity of preference.
MOON MARK: Our entertainment and education platform creates experiences and happy to engage people across Earth as well as in space, applying science, technology, engineering, arts, and math disciplines to inspire generation x.
INTUITIVE MACHINES: Our Houston-based company was founded in 2021 by aerospace experts with deep technical knowledge and successes honed over 40 years of human spaceflight and processes.
