The first day of activities for NASA’s annual Human Exploration Rover Challenge, kicked off on April 8 at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Almost 80 teams from the United States, Italy, Germany, India, Mexico, Colombia and Russia, as well as Puerto Rico, are scheduled to compete in the event. The twoday challenge, managed by Marshall Space Flight Center, requires students to design, build, test and race lightweight, and humanpowered vehicles both as a research project and to investigate and test technologies that could potentially be used on future deepspace exploration missions.