Moonhack 2020 registrations now open

Registrations are now open for Moonhack 2020 – a global initiative that gets young people (ages 5 – 15) into coding lessons. This year there will 6 different projects that participants can choose from: an offline project; a project which requires hardware, and four that require computers (though these can be achieved without internet access) – find out more about each of the different projects on the Code Club Australia blog.

Young people who want to join this year’s Moonhack will be required to register their participation on this website. Registrations will be open until 24 May 2020. Once registered, participants will receive special tips on getting set up, certificates and fun resources.

Moonhack week will then commence on the 25 May 2020 and run through until the 31 May 2020 – where kids will be joining a huge community around Australia participating in the coding challenge.

Almost 100,000 kids across the world have participated in Moonhack over the last few years, which have had a fun focus on space-themed coding activities, such as driving lunar rovers across the Moon’s surface or learning about the different features of the planets in our Solar System.

Coding skills are considered an essential part of young people’s education, as many careers in science, technology, engineering, arts, maths, and medicine require this knowledge – including numerous jobs in the space industry (e.g. astronomers spend a lot of their time working with coding).

Moonhack is run through Code Club Australia – a Telstra foundation-supported charity – which works with a volunteer network to attend to 75,000 kids per week in coding lessons. SpaceAustralia.com is excited to be partnering with Code Club Australia for this excellent community project – as part of our Inspiring NextGen campaign.

With recent self-isolation restrictions being implemented around the world, parents are encouraged to register as volunteers – and run a Moonhack week at home with their kids. Schools that are now rolling out lessons online, along with libraries doing the same are also encouraged to join the project running virtual Moonhack sessions with Zoom or other online video conferencing services.