The Friendswood High School  2011 Zero Robotics Team made it into the semi-finals once again this year in the Zero Robotics Competition sponsored and created by MIT. 
            Team members consist of three returning members from last year: Kyle Wiley, Quinn Swanson and Joe Le along with Nathan Nguyen, Tejas Roysam, Rachel Goeken, Nathan Hobley and Chris Neagu.
           Last year the team worked alone as a team and was in first place nationally when they participated at MIT in mid-December to run their code on satellites that were on board the International Space Station.
           This year the team of eight did well on the first two challenges to make it to the semi-finals and have been working very hard and closely with MIT during the past couple of months, according to sponsor Annette Walter.
           During last year’s competition, each team that qualified as a semi-finalist competed only for their school. This year’s challenge is opening the doors for the 21st century skill of collaboration.
           Each semi-finalist team will be paired up with two other schools in the nation. The three teams will then work together to compete as one team to contend with other 3-man teams.
           “This will be an interesting scenario for everyone.  The students are excited about working collaboratively with other high school students in the nation. We will be Skyping with the other teams about strategy and programmming code,” Walter said. “Once again, a great project based learning example and a real world experience for all the students involved in this competition!”
           Aerospace mentors who have been helping our include Dr. David Goeken, Dr. Steve Swanson and Patrick Walter.