ALABAMA STUDENTS TO NAME MOON-BOUND SPACECRAFT

 

ALABAMA STUDENTS TO NAME MOON-BOUND SPACECRAFT FOR OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD PRIZE

Huntsville, Ala. (Jan. 31, 2012) – Today, on the 54th anniversary of the launching of the Explorer 1satellite, the Rocket City Space Pioneers (RCSP) invited Alabama public school fourth graders to participate in their mission to the moon.  RCSP, the Alabama Tourism Department and the Alabama Department of Education unveiled the details of a contest that will allow fourth graders to name RCSP’s moon-bound lander.  The winning class will get a free trip to Space Camp, and the teacher will receive a $500 gift card for classroom supplies.

The announcement was made at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center’s Davidson Center, and the event featured a rocket engine firing and a display of hardware from Rocket City Space Pioneers team members.

Tim Pickens, team leader for the Rocket City Space Pioneers, said:  “The RCSP team is excited to involve Alabama students in our mission. Another one of our missions is educational outreach. The

Rocket City Space Pioneers want to encourage students to pursue studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and this contest is one way we can show them cool things that can be done in these disciplines.”

The Rocket City Space Pioneers team, led by Huntsville-based Dynetics, is comprised of businesses, educational institutions and non-profit organizations. The team is competing in the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a $30 million competition that challenges space professionals and engineers from across the globe

to build and launch to the moon a privately funded spacecraft capable of completing a series of exploration and transmission tasks. Headquartered in Huntsville, the team’s members are all either based in Alabama or have a presence in the state. The Rocket City group is among 26 teams from all over the world that are registered in the competition.

The team is developing a low-cost lunar lander/rover system for conducting commercial and scientific missions on the Moon and potentially other planetary bodies. The lander/rover system is capable of making a soft landing on a planetary body and deploying a rover. The Rocket City Space Pioneers are asking fourth-grade students in Alabama public schools to choose a name for their lander.

Dynetics President Tom Baumbach explained the importance of education outreach and STEM to the company leading the Rocket City Space Pioneers:  “I've observed over the 44 years of my engineering career that a majority of the truly productive technical people I've worked with had a strong vision of their profession that started when they were 10 or 11 years old. That’s when we need to capture the imagination of our young students and let them feel the beginnings of passion that can serve them their entire life.

“It was reinforced when I worked at Bell Telephone Labs in the late 60s – they expected that you'd do your best work before you turned 30! That's why Dynetics is so thoroughly committed to STEM and why we're excited to have the fourth graders in Alabama name our lander – we hope it will stimulate the very age group that will be the start of our next generation of scientists and engineers."

Through the Name the Lander contest, students will learn about moon landers through a lesson plan developed by Space Camp and fun activity sheets. Fourth-grade teachers will have an opportunity to submit their respective class’ suggested name through an online registration system. The registration period for the contest is Jan. 31 – Feb. 15.  The contest period is Feb. 15 – Feb. 23.  The winning name will be selected in early March.

For more information about the Rocket City Space Pioneers, go to www.rocketcityspacepioneers.com.

About The Rocket City Space Pioneers

The Rocket City Space Pioneers are led by Huntsville-based company Dynetics and consist of team members Teledyne Brown Engineering, Andrews Space, Spaceflight Services, Draper Laboratory, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the Von Braun Center for Science & Innovation (VCSI), Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Moog, Analytical Mechanics Associates (AMA) and the Huntsville Center for Technology.

About Dynetics

Dynetics delivers the “Power of Solutions” to government and commercial customers in the areas of intelligence, missiles, aviation, cyber and space.  Based in Huntsville, Ala., with offices throughout the United States, Dynetics is a mid-tier company that provides complete lifecycle analysis, engineering and hardware solutions to support customer missions. For more information visit www.dynetics.com.

About the Google Lunar X PRIZE

The $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented international competition that challenges and inspires engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. The $30 million prize purse is segmented into a $20 million Grand Prize, a $5 million Second Prize and $5 million in bonus prizes. To win the Grand Prize, a team must successfully soft land a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon, rove on the lunar surface for a minimum of 500 meters, and transmit a specific set of video, images and data back to the Earth. The Grand Prize is $20 million until December 31st 2012; thereafter it will drop to $15 million until December 31st 2014 at which point the competition will be terminated unless extended by Google and the X PRIZE Foundation. For more information about the Google Lunar X PRIZE, please visit www.googlelunarxprize.org.

About the X PRIZE Foundation

The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. In 2004, the Foundation captured world headlines when Burt Rutan, backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, built and flew the world’s first private vehicle to space to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE. The Foundation has since launched the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics, the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, and the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE. The Foundation is creating and conducting competitions in four prize groups: Exploration (Space and Oceans), Life Sciences, Energy & Environment, and Education & Global Development. The Foundation is widely recognized as the leader in fostering innovation through competition. For more information, please visit www.xprize.org.             

Contacts:

Janet Felts                                  256.713.5439

Dynetics

janet.felts@dynetics.com

 

Edith Parten

Alabama Tourism Department      334.242.4537

Edith.Parten@tourism.alabama.gov

 

Malissa Valdes-Hubert

Alabama Department of Education 334.242.9952

mvaldes@ALSDE.edu

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