Image Courtesy : www.nasa.gov

Two Indian student groups hailing from Tamil Nadu and Punjab have won the NASA 2022 Human Exploration Rover Challenge. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced the result during a virtual ceremony held on April 29.

In the challenge, around 91 teams participated including 33 high schools and 58 colleges.

Under the challenge, the US and international student teams participated to engineer, designing and testing a human-powered rover on a route simulating territory found on the solar system's rocky bodies.

The participating teams, while negotiating the course, also executed mission assignments, sample retrievals, and spectrographic analysis.

The winner of the STEM Engagement Award in the division of High School from Punjab is the Decent Children Model Presidency School and the winner of the Social Media Award in the division of College/ University from Tamil Nadu is the Vellore Institute of Technology.

The activity head for the challenge at Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville in Alabama Aundra Brooks-Davenport said, "This year, students were asked to design a course that would mimic obstacles as if they were competing in Huntsville".