This is a robot competition for the moon, which serves as a subsidiary competition of the Google Lunar Xprize competition intended for children and youth
The famous international competition Google Lunar Xprize, which offers a large monetary prize to whoever succeeds in bringing a vehicle to the moon first, has already become a household name in Israel thanks to the SpaceIL association, which is the Israeli competitor there. This competition has a subsidiary competition, designed for children and youth. The competition is called Moonbots and aims to interest young people in robotics, space, and science while encouraging them to contribute to the community. http://moonbots.org/
This year about 250 groups of 3-4 participants each, aged 8-18 from all over the world participated in this competition, of which, with the encouragement of SpaceIL, there were also 10 Israeli groups.
In the first phase, which ended in June, each group had to submit a 3-minute video describing what inspires them about the moon. The videos were interesting and full of inspiration and creativity, very diverse in their content and style.
30 teams advanced to the final stage, of which 3 were Israeli teams:
- Life Mission – which presented a goal to search for life below the surface of the moon
- Moonsticks - which presented a goal to build colonies on the moon that economize themselves, using animation
- The Dreamers - which presented a goal to build on the moon a new world without wars where all humans are equal
The groups received a robotics kit with which they must design and build a robot that will perform a simulation of space missions. They will have to present the robot and the tasks they planned to Google live during September. In addition, the groups received a side mission: to contribute to the community by holding meetings designed to interest other children in science, robotics and space.
The first meeting was held on Thursday August 13.8, at Mitzpe Ramon, during the science festival events of the Night of the Meteors. Hundreds of people met the teams, were impressed by the robots and learned about the competition.
During August, additional meetings are held throughout the country.
