Engineering Students Invited to Enter NASA's 2025 Lunabotics Challenge

Engineering Students Invited to Enter NASA's 2025 Lunabotics Challenge
by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 09, 2024

NASA is calling on teams from colleges, universities, and technical schools nationwide to showcase their engineering talents in the 2025 Lunabotics Challenge. Applications for the competition open at 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 6. This event is designed to motivate Artemis Generation students to engage deeply with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines, contributing to advancements that benefit humanity.

Organized by NASA's Office of STEM Engagement, the Lunabotics Challenge requires teams to create and operate a robot-either autonomous or telerobotic-that can navigate a simulated lunar environment and complete specific construction tasks. Participants must design robots capable of handling the challenges posed by regolith, or lunar soil simulants, while constructing berm structures. The robots must function under strict weight and size constraints and be operable remotely or autonomously.

As part of NASA's Artemis Student Challenges, this competition offers students a unique chance to gather and analyze data on robotic excavation and construction. Their findings may influence future lunar missions and, eventually, Mars exploration. NASA encourages inventive approaches to construction and rigorously assesses student designs, providing an authentic engineering experience similar to the development of its own prototypes.

In addition to contributing to future space missions, the competition serves as an educational platform, immersing students in NASA's systems engineering process-a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach to system design, management, operations, and eventual decommissioning.

The competition will conclude on Thursday, Sept. 12, with NASA announcing the selected teams on Friday, Sept. 20. The chosen teams will participate in the Lunabotics Qualification Challenge at the University of Central Florida in May 2025. The top performers will advance to the final event at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida later that month.

Lunabotics, an annual event since 2010, is part of the broader Artemis Student Challenges, aligned with NASA's goals of landing the first woman, first person of color, and first international astronaut on the Moon. This program supports the agency's long-term vision of establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon and preparing for future Mars exploration.

Over 7,000 students have participated in Lunabotics, both on-site and remotely, with many alumni now working at NASA or in the aerospace industry.

To learn more about LUNABOTICS, visit here.