After 3 days of incredible competition, the 2024 University Rover Challenge (URC2024) crowned a new champion, AGH Space Systems from AGH University of Krakow in Poland. This was the first championship win by a team from Poland since 2019. Team Mountaineers, the defending champions from West Virginia University (USA). The BYU Mars Rover team from Brigham Young University (USA) finished in third place for the second consecutive year. 102 teams from 15 countries began the year competing in URC2024. In March, the top 38… READ MORE >
Topic Area: Students
The Mars Society is thrilled to announce the launch of the Third Annual International Mission to Mars Engineering Design Competition for high school students aged 13-19 worldwide. Students are invited to register online for this exciting exploratory design challenge. Inspired by engineering design courses at leading universities, the virtual program will feature morning and afternoon sessions (Monday-Friday) from June 3rd to July 12th, 2024. Participants will engage in lectures led by prominent scientists and engineers from NASA, the aerospace industry,… READ MORE >
Mars Society Welcomes Nissan Advanced Technology Center Silicon Valley (NATC-SV) as 2024 URC Sponsor
The Mars Society is excited to welcome the Nissan Advanced Technology Center – Silicon Valley (NATC-SV) as a sponsor of the 2024 University Rover Challenge. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., NATC-SV is the center of global excellence for Artificial Intelligence and next-generation mobility solutions at Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. Researchers and scientists at the center study all areas of automotive research, from the use of AI for developing new battery materials to the design of new systems on a chip for the… READ MORE >
By Dr. Robert Zubrin, President, The Mars Society, Space.com, 09.08.22 We can reverse the conventional relationship of students to scientific knowledge. Around the world, in all the best university engineering programs, students encounter at some point a class different from all the others. This is the engineering design class, within which, instead of being tested as individuals on their mastery of lectures and texts, the class is challenged to work as a team to design a complex engineering system capable… READ MORE >