Nasa invites students to rise to 2024 Human Exploration Rover Challenge

The U.S. space agency invites those interested in designing, developing, building, and testing rovers for Moon and Mars exploration to submit their proposals.

The Human Exploration Rover Challenge asks high school, college or university students from around the world to create “lightweight, human-powered rovers”. These will have to traverse an obstacle course simulating lunar and Martian terrain, while also completing mission-related science tasks.

And once selected, students are required to complete design and safety reviews mirroring the engineering design process used by Nasa engineers and scientists.

The agency hopes the participating students will enhance their communication, collaboration, inquiry, problem-solving, and flexibility skills, to the benefit of their academic and professional lives.

Interested teams should review the handbook for proposal guidelines and task challenges, which can be found online.

“Our Human Exploration Rover Challenge will focus on an immersive story based on proposed NASA-use cases for crewed and uncrewed rovers during upcoming Artemis missions, including exploring permanently shadowed regions, positioning to recharge batteries, power and data exchange with other surface assets, and storing collected samples,” said Vemitra Alexander, challenge activity lead for NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement.

“Students must determine why an autonomous rover exploring the shadowed regions has gone out of contact and, if possible, attempt to repair the robotic rover.”

Note, to help possible participants, challenge experts will be hosting two webinars at 10am (EDT) and 6pm (EDT) on Thursday 24 August. The virtual sessions will outline the proposal processes, and requires pre-registration.

The deadline for proposals is Thursday 21 September 2023.

In October, it will announce the first round winners. This group of teams will be invited to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, near Nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Center, in April 2024, to showcase their submissions.

To find out more about the rover challenge, visit: nasa.gov/roverchallenge

STEM

Nasa highlights that the challenge provides students a chance to engage with its Artemis program, which includes putting the first woman and first person of colour on the Moon.

The challenge is managed by NASA’s Southeast Regional Office of STEM Engagement at Marshall and is one of eight Artemis Student Challenges.

Image: Nasa – Students from the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Cuernavaca, Mexico, cheer for teammates during the 2023 competition.

See also: Nasa backs Astrobotic for Moon power generation services