Edison Middle School Students Win 1st Place In Satellite Programming Competition

EDISON, NJ — Two Edison middle school students were part of a team that recently won the satellite programming competition – Zero Robotics.

Saanvika Govindaraj and Vaibhav Sitaraman of Edison are part of Storming Robots - a Branchburg/Bridgewater-based Robotics and advanced Computer Science Learning lab that won first place in the competition. The Storming Robots team consisted of 20 members.

Zero Robotics is a computer programming competition and consists of two divisions – High School and Middle School Divisions.

Zero Robotics 2023 is provided through a partnership between the MIT Space Enabled Research Group, the Innovation Learning Center, the Aerospace Corporation, the ISS National Laboratory, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (NASA), National Science Foundation, STEMX365, and Aurora Flight Science.

Before the Summer of 2023, Zero Robotics Middle School division was limited to mainly the MA and CA areas. But in 2023 Summer, the competition accepted teams from across the United States.

The completion took place at the International Station on Aug. 3, where the NJ team was crowned winner.

The programming environment is in simulation mode and entirely web-based. During the 2023 Summer Competition, teams were tasked to collect lunar samples from unpredictable sites and transport them back to the space station.

Students had to write a math algorithm to maximize the collection but minimize the power usage within the shortest time.

The NJ team programmed in C computer language while most other teams used blockly programming language.

“Although deemed difficult, C is a powerful and fast programming language that is the backbone of modern computing systems. Be able to be proficient in C, students are empowered to adapt to many other programming languages," said Elizabeth Mabrey, the director of Storming Robots.

Mabrey was among the 155 U.S. Presidential Scholars Program's Distinguished Teachers Award recipients in 2019.

“This is truly an exceptionally inspirational event for youngsters to pursue their interests in science and engineering. Students are ecstatic to have the opportunity of having their codes running in Space.”

The Storming Robots team will conduct a technical presentation at the center in early Fall. To check out the schedule, visit : https://www.stormingrobots.com.

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