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we're here at the gilroy center at the

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johnson space center with a whole bunch

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of students from texas who are

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participating in the zero robotics

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experiment today i'm joined by ben

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morrell who's the lead mentor for the

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texas students here and also a couple of

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our lucky kids who have their stuff

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flying on space station right now now

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ben i want to start off with you just

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give us a little bit of background about

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the xero robotics program what is it

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we're watching here so zero robotics

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started in 2009 where astronaut greg

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chamitov was working with the spheres

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robots he recognized that they're quite

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a robust platform that was really a lot

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of potential to be used for for kids

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programming and from that working with

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mit they started off with zero robotics

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program where high school kids and

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middle school kids can program these

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robots controlling them to autonomously

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move around and carry out some kind of

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tasks so for instance the game this year

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is taking photos of an asteroid and

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they're competing against another team

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to try and get the most points for

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instance to take the most photos and

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what they do is they compete against

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each other to get through competitions

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and in their finals brackets and the

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finals they actually get to run their

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code on the spheres robots on the

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international space station which is

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what we're here today to see and it's

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just an amazing kind of thing for them

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to be able to do i mean it's very

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exciting anytime you get to see

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something these kids are working on in

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space what have they had to do to get to

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this point you know what what is what

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are these kids actually doing in their

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classrooms before they get here so these

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kids have been in a five-week summer

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program and so i started off learning

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the basics of how to code how to program

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and there's kind of a graphical program

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interface to help learn how to do that

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but at the same time they learn about

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maths they're learning about science

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physics about space about engineering

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about what nasa's doing and i don't know

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you guys having a fun time as well oh

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yeah having a good time learning how to

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work as a team yeah

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so they developed code to compete

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against the state so they had a texas

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competition these guys won the texas

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competition yeah

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then they collaborated worked with the

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other state the other teams in the state

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to develop their code to work on the

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what's going to be running at the moment

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on the international space station to

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compete against the other states in the

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nation okay and one more thing for you

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how important is it you know get kids

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involved at almost any age in these

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programming science math things like

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that i think it's incredibly important

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for many reasons

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one of the reasons is kind of to give

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you guys an idea of what i can do in

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engineering

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with science so against each other you

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might be able to have an idea of what an

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engineer does what a programmer does we

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might have no idea at all but doing this

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gives you a real idea i can do some

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awesome stuff in space in science and

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engineering type things second thing is

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inspiration to see that your guys code

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is on the international space station

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that's really inspiring you can do that

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you can do anything if you really want

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to do something it kind of shows you

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some really cool stuff

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working with nasa working in space

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there's some fantastic opportunities

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that you guys can work on

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and third thing is programming and those

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10 skills i think are really valuable in

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any field so i think that's kind of

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something really important to get

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exposure to okay well now i want to get

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to some of the stars of the hour here

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with our texas teams we have stephen and

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tristan guys

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how cool is it to see something that you

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worked on in space right now it's

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incredible yeah it's like you would

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never think that like just this little

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thing you decide to do in summer can get

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it all the way up into the international

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space station it doesn't seem real yeah

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okay well i mean is this something you

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guys are already thinking about working

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on you want to be are you our next

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astronauts or our engineers of the

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future

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probably

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yeah we were always kind of interested

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in science and programming so this just

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seemed awesome

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okay well best of luck to you guys best

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of luck to the texas and all of the

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other teams competing today in the

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spheres competition we're real excited

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here at the johnson space center as are