You would think being crowned world champions would satisfy even the most competitive people, but not the Mars Rover Design Team members. The team was initially invited to the Canadian International Rover Challenge, held in July in Drumheller, Alberta, to help judge the inaugural competition, but decided to enter the competition as well.

Logistics prevented the team from bringing world-champion Gryphon to the competition, so they challenged themselves to build a new rover in 14 hours. That is design, find parts and build a functional rover in the same amount of time that it took the team to travel to the Canadian event.

After two trips to a big box store and three to a local tire store, the team entered Ned into the competition. Ned was built out of four hockey sticks, four dismantled cordless drills, a wooden milk crate, an angle iron, two plastic knives and some 16-gauge wire.

The team members finished third out of three, but had a lot of fun guiding the other teams and pushing themselves to the edge of creativity.