Starkville, Miss. – NASA engineers Bobak Ferdowsi and Adam Steltzner visited Mississippi State University on Tuesday as local middle and high school students presented their robotic creations in the Mississippi BEST competition.
Steltzner was the lead for the landing of the rover and also helped design, test and build the sky crane landing system for the rover. Ferdowsi served as the flight director of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover cruise mission phase and subsequent surface mission.
Student teams participating in the competition had six weeks to design a robot using only a standardized box of materials. In the final competition, their robots were tested – and showcased for the NASA engineers.
Steltzner said he was amazed at the inventiveness of the student participants.
“These kids are very ingenious, and it’s a delight to watch them work. They are coming up with ideas that are fantastic. It’s great to be a part of this,” he said.
Steltzner also said the future looks bright for students in Mississippi.
“If the people in Mississippi feel they are not competitive with the rest of the states, they’re not coming to competitions like this. When I look at the students in here, I see kids that are destined for greatness,” he said.
Ferdowsi arrived late to the competition, but said he was impressed with the students’ work. He also said his educators influenced his journey toward becoming a NASA engineer.
“The whole experience was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I had some fantastic teachers along the way,” Ferdowsi said.
Starkville Christian School senior Caleb Jordan was one of the team participants in the competition and said he was honored to have a NASA scientist see their work.
“It felt really good. It was really fun,” Jordan said.
Jordan Prather, a sophomore at Starkville Christian School, said his team’s robot was really constructed in 12 days instead of six weeks.
“It took us six weeks to make, but unfortunately, most of that was constrained by schoolwork. We, unlike some other teams, are not fortunate enough to have an actual class on this, so all of our work was put in on weekends,” Prather said.
Prather and Jordan both plan to attend MSU to become engineers.
Steltzner’s advice to students at the competition was to stay curious.
“The human curiosity that we all share drives us to explore our universe. If you let yourself follow that curiosity, great things will happen.”
BEST Robotics promotes students to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers through participation in their competitions. Mississippi, one of 15 other states, hosts one of the 39 licensed BEST competitions each year.
Ferdowsi and Stelzner’s visit to Starkville will end with their presentation, “More than just Curiosity,” sponsored by the MSU Bagley College of Engineering’s Distinguished Lecture Series. The program takes place in the Colvard Student Union at MSU tonight at 6 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
For more information about the Mississippi BEST program, visit msbest.msstate.edu.
Mary Chase Breedlove is a senior at Mississippi State studying communication. She serves as a staff writer and the opinion editor for The Reflector, the student newspaper of MSU, and works as an intern for WMC-TV Action News 5 in Memphis, Tenn.