Forty years after the first lunar rover rolled across the moon's surface, 84 teams of enterprising future engineers will demonstrate the same ingenuity and can-do spirit at the 18th annual NASA Great Moonbuggy Race, set for April 1-2 in Huntsville, Ala.
The event challenges high school and college students to design, build and race lightweight, human-powered rovers - "moonbuggies" - which address many of the same engineering challenges dealt with by Apollo-era lunar rover developers in the late 1960s.
Teams include U.S. high school, college and university students from 22 states and Puerto Rico; and international challengers from six countries, including returning teams from Canada, India and Germany and -- for the first time - racers from Ethiopia, Pakistan and Russia.