The Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) invites school students aged between 11 and 19 to apply to the second space robotics competition organised by the European Space Agency (ESA). The participants are challenged to design a robot that can move cargo from one end of an International Space Station (ISS) mock-up to another.

ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who will fly to the International Space Station for 10 days in September this year within the mission named iriss, will be involved in the competition.

Calendar of the competition

6 February - deadline for receiving the letters of intent from student teams. Students must then submit a video, which will present the team members, the strategy they are adopting for their robot and any prototype hardware they have constructed.

22 May - until then the teams must submit their design review documentation, including the design of their robot, so that their projects can be rated.

December - the remaining teams will assemble at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), The Netherlands, for the grand final.

Over two days, the teams will compete with one another to see whose robot can move more cargo from one part of a mock ISS to another, avoiding collisions on the way.

Andreas Mogensen will be there the whole time, answering to students questions about his time in space. At the end of the competition he will present the prizes to the winners.

More details about the competition are available here.