The 15th annual MATE international ROV competition starts today June 23, 2016 at the NASA Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL) in Houston, Texas.

With NASA and Oceaneering Space Systems (OSS) looking to make use of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), the 2016 MATE competition highlights how technologies developed for use in the harsh ocean environment can also be used in outer space - and vice versa.

The MATE competition challenges K-12, community college, and university students from all over the world to design and build ROVs to tackle missions modeled after scenarios from the ocean workplace.

The competition’s class structure of beginner, intermediate, and advanced complements the education pipeline by providing students with the opportunity to build upon their skills – and the application of those skills – as they engineer increasingly more complex ROVs for increasingly more complex mission tasks.

The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center uses ROVs to teach science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and prepare students for technical careers. Working in partnership with the Marine Technology Society ROV Committee, MATE created the ROV competition as a way to:

- Engage students in STEM and expose them to science and technology careers;

- Encourage students to develop and apply technical, teamwork, and problem solving skills;

- Provide funds, materials, and technical expertise to support student learning provide industry with skilled individuals who can fill workforce needs.