NASA plans to upload code developed by teens to control bowling ball-sized satellites aboard the International Space Station.
The off-the-wall experiment tomorrow is part of a contest sponsored by the elite Pentagon research unit known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The software code was developed by teams of U.S. high school students as part of the fourth annual student robotics challenge, according to a NASA press release today.
The top 45 teams had their code sent last week to the space station, where an astronaut plans to command the satellites to run the teams’ flight programs.
The best-performing code wins.
In return, the winning team of students will receive certificates and a flight patch that was flown aboard the space station, according to the release.