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Lunar Robotics Challenge

The ESA have evaluated the winning student teams.

Eight university teams have been selected to proceed to the design stage of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Lunar Robotics Challenge.

The ESA issued an Announcement of Opportunity to universities last March to create a robot capable of working the difficult lunar landscape and retrieving samples from a lunar crater.

Objectives for the challenge saw the entrants describe the design of a vehicle capable of retrieving soil samples from a crater, and an associated remote-operation workstation. The vehicles are required to weigh no more than 100 kg, consume no more than 2 kW of power, and occupy a volume of no more than 0.5 cubic metres with deployable appendages stowed.

Eight of the submitted proposals have been evaluated by a team of ESA experts and have now been selected for funding.

The selected teams are the Universität Bremen, Germany, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain, Oulun Yliopisto (University of Oulu), Finland, Università di Pisa, Italy, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna Pisa, Italy, Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey, United Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - ETH) Zurich, Switzerland.

These teams have received the go-ahead to design their robotic systems and build them to compete in the next challenge event. All teams will be required to keep a web blog during the next stage of the challenge.

A Test Readiness Review will be held at the premises of each university team once construction of their robot is complete. The challenge will culminate in a 10-day competition, to be held in October 2008.

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