Schedule
This year's Aerospace Jam will take place in the Baird Center. Competition Day itself will be on:
April 10, 2026 at 7:00 AM
The night before competition day is Load-In, and that is when the event starts to become real. Volunteers assemble the arena nets, place them correctly in the competition hall, and set out tables and chairs for judges, teams, vendors, and viewing areas. Team tables are generally arranged in rows with clear aisles so staff and students can move around the pit area without everything turning into a traffic jam.
Load-In is also when the digital side of the event should come together. Staff receive their ASJudge credentials and role assignments, review the ASJudge Overview along with the guide for their assigned role, and make sure the team list in the platform is correct before the competition schedule is published.
Competition Day
Competition Day gets busy very quickly. Between 7:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., teams check in and receive their ASJudge identifier number, which is given to their adult mentor for safekeeping and later used for Congeniality Bonus voting. During that same window, staff are assigned their formal ASJudge roles and their permissions are checked so that everyone lands on the correct dashboard.
Opening presentations run from about 8:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., followed by team prep time until about 9:25 a.m. After that, competition runs across all three arenas for most of the day. Near the end, judges and leads reconcile scores and verify awards, then the event shifts into the awards ceremony before finally wrapping up with load-out and teardown.
ASJudge timing model
ASJudge treats arena time in simple blocks so every staff member can stay oriented. Each arena run is planned as a 20-minute arena block, and teams are normally called to queue about 5 minutes before their arena start time. Future times are only estimates until a facilitator logs the real Start and End, so those estimates may move a little throughout the day as the live schedule adjusts.
In practical terms, that means one of the most important habits on the floor is also one of the simplest: facilitators should press Start and End as close to reality as possible, because those actions affect far more than their own screen.