River Hill High School's advanced Computer Science class will be participating in the final round of the 2015 Spy SPHERES Zero Robotics competition sponsored by NASA, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  Team Rocket is composed of 16 students who have used their knowledge in physics, math, engineering and computer programming to program satellites using online systems and simulators provided by MIT.  They have competed against teams from across the United States and Europe, Russia and Australia in a challenging game by programming the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental  Satellites (SPHERES).  Thirteen final alliance teams will compete in the final round by having their programs run on the actual SPHERES by astronauts aboard the International Space Station in a live broadcast from space.  

Through a process of elimination starting in early September they worked their way to the last phase where Team Rocket formed an alliance with teams from Naples, Italy and Woodbridge, Virginia.   They communicated daily as they worked as a team to earn a place in the finals.  The Team Rocket alliance known as EphemeralWaterRocket is currently ranked in 5th place internationally going into the finals.   They will travel to MIT to watch the finals on January 25th.  River Hill has had a team in the finals 4 out of the last 5 years and won the competition in 2011.
Students on Team Rocket include: Jacob Chandran, Andrew Chen, Steffen Cornwell,Brendan Corriere, Samuel Gift, Akhil Katuri, Alexander Lin, Jason Owens, Cyrus Saadat, Maxwell Scherer, Justin Smedley, Ming-Xi Song, Raghav Srivastava, Sohum Thakkar, Joseph Thomas, David Wang.  Their teacher is Anne Contney.