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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, Rob Mueller, lead technical expert and head judge welcomes college students to NASA’s Fourth Annual Robotic Mining Competition during the opening ceremony. The competition will take place through May 24. The mining competition is coordinated by Kennedy Space Center’s Education Office for the agency’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. Undergraduate and graduate students from 50 universities and colleges in the U.S. and eight countries around the world will use their remote-controlled robots to maneuver and dig in a supersized sandbox filled with a crushed material called regolith that has characteristics similar to asteroids, moons of Mars and Mars itself. Photo credit: NASA_Lorne Mathre