Tampa Hackerspace’s own Team Miles (http://miles-space.com) was awarded top honors in the NASACubeQuest Challenge Ground Tournament 1 awards presentation today. They topped a field of 13 teams including teams from MIT and Cornell.
Team Miles, based at the Tampa Hackerspace in Tampa, FL is a registered competitor in the NASA CubeQuest Challenge which is part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges. The team plans to launch the Miles spacecraft as part of the secondary payload on the NASA SLS-EM1 mission with the goal of competing for the lunar orbit prize as part of the Lunar Derby of the NASA CubeSat Challenge.
The CubeQuest Challenge includes four ground tournaments, the lunar derby and a deep space derby in space with multiple prize opportunities totaling $5 million. Patterned after X Prize challenges, this challenge gives NASA a platform to test innovative technology outside of NASA’s customary approval process. The team takes home a prize of $20,000 and earned a review of their mission safety plan with top NASA safety engineers.
“Next up for Team Miles is preparation for GT2. Once we receive our detailed scores from NASA, it will be heads down to address the next phase of the challenge and prepare our spacecraft for flight.” says Bill Shaw, a member of Team Miles and president of Tampa Hackerspace.
Team Miles includes in its list of sponsors two local companies, The DRI, an IT services firm, and Fluid & Reason, LLC, a contract engineering firm and creator or the ConstantQ plasma engine. Other sponsors include Brainloop, Yosemite Space, and Basecamp.
###