Space was the final frontier for Mount St. Joseph High School students as they competed in the NASA/MIT Robotics SPHERES Challenge on Monday, Jan. 23.
Two dozen students watched as a volleyball-sized satellite they had programmed with two schools from New England completed an obstacle course in zero gravity conditions aboard a space station against eight other teams from around the country.
The unofficial results available Jan. 23 indicated the all-boys Catholic high school in Irvington finished third, said George Kapusinski, a second-year science and robotics teacher and the team's mentor.
"It was just really exciting. It was a nailbiter," Kapusinski said, noting his team's 30-point total was three points from first place and two points behind the second-place finisher. "The students understood the rules of the game and they were hanging on to the edge of their seats."
Hanging on was about all the students could do because they handed in the code that propelled the satellite at least a week before the competition, said Kapusinski, a Catonsville resident.
"I feel like we did all we could do to put ourselves in a position to win," said Cody Broache, a senior who plans to major in computer science in college. "It's great to see Mount St. Joe on the same level as some of the top computer science schools."
The team of students from two classes learning the programming language C++, began its quest five months ago with 120 other teams and survived several cutdowns to be one of 27 schools to reach the finals, Kapusinski said.
The team showed significant improvement from when the challenge started in September as the school made the second biggest upward move through the first three rounds of competition, the release stated.
"At the beginning, we were basically clueless," Broache said, noting it took weeks for his class to understand how to use time as a variable. "We had to start from scratch and figure out what every function did."
"We can see how long a way we've come," said junior Tim Burke, a Catonsville resident. "We can actually run pretty decent programs and are currently working with 3D."
Burke, who plans to major in computer science in college, noted that he plans to ask Kapusinski if he could participate in the competition next year, even though he won't be enrolled in the class.
Mount St. Joseph's team partnered with Lexington Christian Academy in Massachusetts and Falmouth High School in Maine to form one of 18 American alliances, the release stated.
The competition also had nine European alliances, the release stated.
The alliances were determined by each school's standing, the release stated. Teams in the top of the three tiers would partner with another school in each of the lower tiers.
Mount St. Joseph High School was in the bottom tier, the release stated.
"We were middle to the high end of the third tier, so we thought that was a pretty good accomplishment for our first year," Burke said.
"They're on a different plane," Broache said of his teammates from the other schools. "It's a good lesson on how different people's skills fit into a big plan of the projects."
While the members of the alliance from the other schools did what Broache called "hard core coding," the students at Mount St. Joseph determined the strategy.
Broache said he and his classmates had little direct contact with the students from the other schools and that communication mostly came through mass emails.
"It was fun figuring things out. Nobody knew what we were doing at first," Broache said. "It felt good knowing that you were contributing to the team and helping us get closer to our goal."