NASA Student Competition Hacked Due To Racial Conflict

An open students competition called Optimus Prime Spinoff Promotion and Research Challenge was held by NASA to encourage students in showing their talents by making real life projects. Many students participated in the competition and made unique projects to try to win the competition and have the privilege of visiting the Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA for two days and spend the day among astronauts to learn about the space environment.

The result was based upon a voting system and students were encouraged to use social media to get votes for their projects by making videos and taking pictures.

What Went Wrong?

Everything was running smooth and 8 finalists were chosen but a group of hackers stepped into the play and tried to sabotage the results. They did that due to racial conflict because one group that reached the finals consisted of 3 black girls from Banneker High School from Washington.

Their project was quite amazing as they made a water filtration system to purify water in schools that don’t get clean water to drink.

The Bottomline

The hack is being investigated by NASA and the result of the competition which was to be announced in the early days of May is postponed due to the sabotage.

 

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