Hyderabad, Oct 12 (IANS): A team of five students from an engineering college in Telangana has been selected for the prestigious NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge.

The team from SR Engineering College, Warangal, will participate in the fifth annual challenge to be held on April 12-14, 2018, in Huntsville, Alabama, US.

It is one of the four teams from India short-listed to compete in the challenge. Students from 23 countries are participating in the challenge to create a buggey designed to traverse the simulated surface of moon.

The team, which will prepare a moon buggy design, report and submit their idea, will be led by faculty Manoj Chaudhary. It includes P. Paul Vineeth, Prakash Raineni, P.Sravan Rao, Rondla Dilipreddy Aand Venishetty Sneha, said a statement.

Congratulating the students, SR Engineering College Secretary A.Madhukar Reddy said it was a great opportunity to design, build, and test technologies that enable rovers to perform in a wide variety of environments.

The NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge began as the NASA Great Moonbuggy Race and was first held in in 1994, 25 years after the first manned Apollo landing on the moon.

The challenge now focuses on National Aeronautics and Space Administration's current plans to explore planets, moons, asteroids and comets.

During its 20-year run, the Great Moonbuggy Race engaged more than 10,000 students and demonstrated that these budding scientists and engineers were capable of complex work.