Two UT students competing at the Great Moon Buggy Race.
As a kickoff event for National Science and Technology Week, the Moon Buggy Race and associated events take place each spring in April at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, adjoining Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, AL. This program continues to grow in popularity, largely as the word spreads across the USA. Some 40 university and high-school teams enter every year.
Larry Taylor, former director of the PGI, helped design the race course between the Saturn V and other rockets at the Space and Rocket Center; he also acted as one of the judges for the contest. Viatcheslav Naoumov from the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, offered an engineering design course which addressed the actual design and construction of a Moon Buggy. This course provided an excellent opportunity for the development of enthusiasm amongst the students. 6-person teams participated in the race, with the 2-person (one male, one female) “Moon Buggy Astronauts”. UT Tennessee Space Grant Consortium partially funds the students of the class to participate at race in Huntsville in April.