NASA's Lunabotics Competition

Some of the deliverables include a Project Management Plan, a Public Outreach Report, Presentations and Demonstrations, and a Systems Engineering Paper.

The rules and rubrics evolve each year to account for changes to the Artemis Program mission objectives and advances in commercially available technology.

The competition allows NASA to gather and evaluate design and operational data for future robotic excavators and builders.

For more than a decade, NASA has been able to gather valuable data about necessary excavation hardware and surface locomotion processes that can be implemented as the agency prepares to return to the Moon through the Artemis program.

NASA followed with a series of robotic Ranger and Surveyor spacecraft that performed increasingly complex tasks that made it possible for the first human beings to walk on the Moon in 1969.

NASA directly benefits from this challenge by annually assessing student designs and data the same way it does for its own, less frequent, prototypes.

Encouraging innovation in student designs increases the potential of identifying clever solutions to the many challenges inherent in future Artemis missions.

Advances for off-world mining and construction offer new possibilities for the same activities here on Earth, expanding the benefits beyond NASA alone.