A team comprised of College of Engineering and College of Science students at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System, placed eight internationally in the 2024 University Rover Challenge (URC) in Moab, Utah. A total of 102 teams began the year competing for an invitation to the URC finals, with a record 38 teams from 10 countries advancing to the last stage of the competition, held in one of the most extreme and Mars-like environments on Earth. UAH team ASTRA, a subset of the UAH Space Hardware Club (SHC), also placed fifth among all United States teams.
The University Rover Challenge is administered by the Mars Society from the Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, Utah, each year. The URC was founded in 2006, with competitions held every summer since 2007. The competition draws an international field of the most talented and promising students in the field of space exploration.
Each team puts their rover through several challenging rounds of science, equipment servicing, extreme retrieval and autonomy mission activities, submitting both written reports as well as video demonstrations to be scored by URC's panel of judges, before being selected for the journey to Utah. Typically, only the top 36 teams qualify for the finals, however this year’s scores proved so strong, officials expanded the field to make room for two additional squads.
“Team ASTRA saw incredible results from its competition deliverables and has done amazing work on their Mars rover as well, says UAH SPC AutoSat Program Manager Louis McEvoy, as indicated by the team’s final scores and seen here in the team’s system acceptance review video. They have completely re-designed and re-manufactured their robotic arm, bio-sensor and wheel systems since last year,” McEvoy notes. They already have a good idea of what they need to make changes on to improve in order to reach a podium position next year, and they have already started work on that goal.
To learn more, visit The Journey of the University Rover Challenge, which documents the experience of URC teams during previous installments of the University Rover Challenge. The video highlights STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, showcasing the hard work engineering and science students put in to design and build Mars rovers that may one day work alongside human explorers in the field.
The Mars Society is the world’s largest and most influential space advocacy organization dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of the planet Mars. Established by Dr. Robert Zubrin and others in 1998, the group works to educate the public, the media and the government on the benefits of exploring Mars and creating a permanent human presence on the Red Planet within the next decade.
Team ASTRA
- Zeke Kuntz (Team Lead) - Mechanical Engineering
- Alex Dibenio - Mechanical Engineering
- Alex Resurreccion - Computer Engineering
- Anshika Sinha - Computer Engineering
- August Longhurst - Aerospace Engineering
- Brennan Begley - Aerospace Engineering
- Brooks Calhoun - Electrical Engineering
- Carrie Waugh - Aerospace Engineering
- Charles Marman - Computer Science
- Cyrus Boak - Mechanical Engineering
- Daegan Brown - Computer Engineering
- David Sharpe - Computer Engineering
- Elena Dishman - Aerospace Engineering
- Enrico Addy - Computer Engineering
- Evan Seliner - Mechanical Engineering
- Faith Sweetser - Electrical Engineering
- Gabriel Campos - Aerospace Engineering
- Grant Quartuccio - Biology and Chemistry
- Jamie Roberson - Computer Science
- Kade Hagerson - Mechanical Engineering
- Kyle Hughes - Aerospace Engineering
- Noah Womak - Aerospace Engineering
- Samuel Arnold - Chemistry
- Tristan Carter - Mechanical Engineering
- Tristan McGinnis - Computer Science
