Laurentian students win NASA Lunabotics

Students from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont., have won NASA's Lunabotics competition, beating out rivals from 40 other universities around the world.

The eight-member team of fourth-year mechanical engineering students won the competition with a lunabot that collected 237.4 kilograms of synthetic lunar material. The goal of the competitionwas to design and build a remote-controlled excavator called a lunabot that can dig and deposit as much of the material,calledlunar regolith simulant, as possiblein 15 minutes.

The University of North Dakota came in second witha lunabot thatcollected 172.2 kilograms andWest Virginia University placed third with a device that collected106.4 kilograms.

"They won the most prestigious prize you could win for an engineering student," said faculty adviser Markus Timusk, while en route to the awards ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday evening. "I'm really proud of these guys."

Timusk told CBC News the win is "an especially sweet victory" because the students will be the first graduates of the school's mechanical engineering program, which was created four years ago.

The team did have a secret weapon.Its sponsor EVC Ltd., whichis a producerof the lunar simulant, provided thematerial allowing the students to learn how it would behave, Timusk said.

"We're really excited," said student Greg Lakanen, 21, who willreturn to Sudbury, Ont.,early Sunday so he can attend his convocation on Thursday. "We've been working on this since September."

He said his next movewill be to attendgraduate school in the fall and that the other team membershave already secured jobs after graduation.

The team wona$5,000 cash prize as well as VIP passes to watch the final launch of the space shuttle Atlantis in July.

This year was the first time the competition was open to international teams. McGill University was the only other Canadian team. Other teams came from the United States, Chile, Bangladesh and India.