STARCATCHER
Excited about space, inventing, and solving real problems, STEM students from the San Francisco Bay Area came up with the first playable game that will be made in space. Made to give the astronauts something fun to do, the students named this first space game: ‘StarCatcher’.
NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson, Expedition 50/51, printed the first game, StarCatcher, on the 0G-3D printer, and demonstrated its use.
Photo Credit: NASA
Photo Credit: NASA
The video below is a demonstration of a StarCatcher prototype.
The demonstration was conducted underwater to simulate the lack of gravity in space.
The demonstration was conducted underwater to simulate the lack of gravity in space.
StarCatcher had to work in zero gravity. No one on the student team had worked in zero gravity or had made anything designed for use in zero gravity conditions before. Not only does the game need to function in zero gravity, the design had to also be:
THE DESIGN
Simple one piece design to be printed on a zero-gravity 3D printer.
RULES OF PLAY
StarCatcher is more than a game – it’s a science experiment that’s fun, needed in space, and opens the universe to STEM in a new way.
StarCatcher is a combination of the games Perplexus and Hot Potato. It’s passed after the player catches the star inside the star port chamber. Points are collected. But the last player in possession of StarCatcher when time is up loses all his/her points.
Objective:first player to gain 11 points wins!
- Print the StarCatcher and its interior StarPort.
- Start a 2 minute timer.
- First player releases Star from StarPort, passes StarCatcher to next player to the left, and gain a point.
- Next player captures the star inside the StarPort releases it, then passes it to the next player and gains a point.
- Last player in possession of StarCatcher at the end of a round loses all points for that round.
- 2 minute rounds continue until a player wins by scoring 11 points total.
Throwing Rules: StarCatcher must be thrown in any manner in the general direction of the next player. Once thrown, it is in possession of the intended receiver.