A group of former UNLV students is getting a rare chance to watch their work travel around the moon as part of the Artemis II mission. From 2015 to 2020, the students, led by longtime UNLV professor Dr. Brendan O’Toole, entered a cooperative agreement with Lockheed Martin to work on projects tied to Artemis II. The students have since graduated and now live in different parts of the country, but for the past 10 days, they have been reconnecting as they watch the mission and the spacecraft components they helped develop.

The workshop — a collaboration between UNLV and University of Nevada, Reno Extension — plants the seeds for the middle schoolers' interest in science and technology through activities with a hydroponics system.

If you drive down Via Inspirada in Henderson, there are a few places that just look like the desert. However, a specific lot, off of Via Inspirada and Larson Lane, will soon become a new Haas Automation manufacturing facility.

This weekend teams from across the Valley and around the world will meet on the field of battle to put their robots to the test. The teams are made up completely of high school students, with the help of some very special mentors sent to them from UNLV. FOX5 caught up with one team to learn more about the competition, and the bonds formed while building robots and futures.

UNLV student mentors are assisting high school robotics teams to compete in the Las Vegas Regional FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). The international robotics competition has teams producing robots to compete against other teams in a game that changes with every tournament. This year involves collecting “notes”, orange, foam rings, and shooting them into goals.

NASA’s long in-development ARTEMIS lunar space missions completed its first phase last month. The idea is to land someone on the moon in two years. Then from there, head to Mars. And the University of Nevada, Las Vegas is helping out.

For centuries, man has looked into the sky at the red planet and could only wonder at the possibility.

The Robotics Academy of Nevada - a new statewide professional development program funded by Tesla's K-12 Education Investment Fund - is being developed by the Desert Research Institute, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the University of Nevada, Reno. Facilitated by DRI's Pre-K-12 STEM education and outreach program, Science Alive, the new academy will launch this summer in partnership with the Colleges of Engineering at Nevada's research universities in Reno and Las Vegas.