This sample introduction has be taken from the 2016-2017 report submitted for and awarded the Neil Armstrong Best Design Award.
*Any typos or grammatical errors appeared in the original document.
Introduction:
We are excited to be back for our fourth year at the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC)! Our school is unique among other independent/private schools in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area in that in addition to traditional college preparatory classes we have a PreK-12th grade STEM program. Our team is comprised of 17 students in 9th – 12th grade. This is the final year the founding members of our rover team will participate at HERC. Through their leadership and example our rover team has become something our Middle School students aspire to be a part of when they reach High School. In addition to our founding seniors we have seven students who are veterans of one or more HERC competitions and six rookie students new to the experience this year.
We have visitors to campus quite frequently and one of the most common questions we receive is, “how long did it take for you to build the rover?” The honest answer is that this has been a four-year iterative design process. As our team is compromised of veteran and rookie team members the institutional knowledge of the team reaches back to our first rover which judged solely on performance was an epic failure. However, if you consider that first rover and our competition experience in 2014 they were phenomenal learning experiences for the group. As new students join the team they bring fresh ideas when harnessed in conjunction with veteran wisdom produces a potent combination of technical and systems engineering expertise.