For the first time in four years, NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge returns to Alabama this week with 48 competing teams and more than 500 students.

Competition at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center will run Friday and Saturday from 7:30 a.m. until 3 p.m. both days – or until the last team’s rover completes the course – and the public is invited.

Teams are coming from 16 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, India, Mexico, Peru and Singapore.

They will race for time over a half-mile-long obstacle course built on the Space & Rocket Center’s Aviation Challenge program’s grounds. That course is designed to simulate the terrain of the moon, Mars and other distant space bodies.

Racing the clock isn’t all the teams must do to win. They must complete mission-focused science tasks and submit detailed reports on their rovers that can pass critical design and safety reviews by real NASA engineers.

The competition is celebrating its 29th year after the pandemic shut it down for three years. It was originally Inspired by the Lunar Rover designed and built in Huntsville for the Apollo moon landings and is one of America’s biggest student engineering and team competitions.

Now, it is also one of eight “Artemis Student Challenges” NASA says give students access to the kinds of knowledge and technology needed to achieve the goals of its Artemis Program. That program seeks to return America astronauts to the moon for long-term stays.

The Space & Rocket Center is running a shuttle from its Davidson Center for Space Exploration parking lot to the Rover Challenge course during the event.