2024 Middle School LOST IN SPACE Finals is Complete!

The Zero Robotics (ZR) program returned to the International Space Station this summer with the 2024 LOST IN SPACE Challenge. 58 teams of 740 middle school students from across the country wrote code for this year's game! Congratuations to everyone who participated.

This year’s Zero Robotics challenge tasked teams with a high-stakes space rescue! After the International Space Station (ISS) was struck by space debris, an astronaut needed to evacuate to a docked spacecraft. The Astrobee robot became the astronaut's lifeline, but first, it needed to clear debris blocking its view of the astronaut's hand signal with the crucial unlock code. Teams had just 3 minutes to program Astrobee to efficiently move debris, conserve power, and capture the hand gesture in time to open the door and ensure the astronaut’s safe return to Earth.

This work and the other efforts to guide Zero Robotics use of Astrobee is led by doctoral students Yiyun Zhang and Alissa Chavalithumrong and postdoctoral scholar Dr. Scott Dorrington. Zero Robotics is led by Dr. Danielle Wood, Director of the MIT Space Enabled Research Group and Katie Magrane of the Innovation Learning Center, along with Mizanul Chowdhury of STEMx365.  You can watch the entire 2024 LOST IN SPACE tournament here: https://www.media.mit.edu/events/2024-summer-middle-school-zero-robotics-final-competition/.  The three winning alliances are listed below: