History

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Space Systems Laboratory (SSL) and astronaut Greg Chamitoff founded Zero Robotics in 2009; they wanted to open research on the International Space Station to large groups of middle and high school students. Zero Robotics is significantly inspired by FIRST robots, thus the name, and have common goal such as constructing lifelong skills in STEM.  In Fall of 2009, the SSL  directed a pilot program of the Zero Robotics competition, motivated by the idea of a satellite assistant robot. The first competition on the International Space Station was on December 9th, 2009.

Zero Robotics took part in NASA's Summer of Innovation, in which over 150 students of 10 teams in the Boston area worked to program the SPHERES for an obstacle course race. After working for 5 weeks, the programs were sent to the ISS and the competition was held live on August 19th, 2010. In Fall 2010, Zero Robotics held a nationwide pilot tournament directed towards high school students called the Zero Robotics SPHERES Challenge 2010: HelioSPHERE in which 24 teams of over 200 students participated.

As of 2025, Zero Robotics runs two annual competitions—one in the summer for middle school students, and one in the Fall for high school students. Every season, a different game presents new challenges for students to overcome. The Zero Robotics program is led by the MIT Space Systems Laboratory, Innovation Learning Center and Aurora Flight Sciences under the sponsorship of Center of the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), Northrop Grumman Foundation and NASA.