It may look a bit like table golf, but for UBC engineering students, it was a space mission to Titan, Saturn鈥檚 largest moon.
Twenty teams tried their hand at shooting 鈥減robes,鈥� or balls, across a 160-square-foot table at the Vancouver campus on Wednesday.
The goal was to aim for a funnel, while competing for top grades in their mechanical engineering class.
The competition replicated NASA鈥檚 Cassini mission from 2005 that successfully landed a probe on Titan鈥檚 surface.
Each team brought their own 鈥渟pacecraft鈥� 鈥� created with 3D printers 鈥� and were timed and graded on the machine's ability to shoot three different-sized balls into the funnel (or Titan鈥檚 orbit).
Marks were based on a combination of spacecraft design and landing performance.
