The search for a broken Martian landing pod and an injured astronaut running short of oxygen are some of the tasks tackled by students from the Off-Road Scientific Circle during the Canadian International Rover Challenge.

The competition was attended by 12 teams from all over the world. The organisers of the Canadian International Rover Challenge prepared the following five challenges:

• searching for a crashed landing pod,
• helping repair a damaged habitat,
• collecting soil samples,
• finding and helping an injured astronaut,
• collecting items lost during base evacuation.

Each task had to be completed as quickly as possible and with utmost accuracy. An additional difficulty with the astronaut search and rescue mission was that everything was happening in the middle of the night.

OSURC Mars Rover from Oregon State University did best in this demanding competition. Scorpio - the rover from Wrocław University of Science and Technology came fifth. Also, the podium saw another Polish team - Rover Team from the University of Warsaw.

The competition was organised in Drumheller (Alberta) in Canada. For full results and more detailed information please look here.

Our representatives went to Canada with their Scorpio X rover, which was first shown to the public in 2017. Since then, however, the design has been modified many times.

Scorpio X has a modular structure, which makes it possible to add additional components and apply virtually any modification of the existing parts. The structure was built largely of lightweight materials, i.e. aerospace aluminium and polyamide, which have good mechanical properties.

The chassis module is based on rocker-type dependent suspension, which is a reduced Rocker-Boogie suspension as used in NASA rovers. Scorpio features an all-wheel drive, each powered by its own engine. There is, however, a solution developed by our students from scratch - tires made of military material called Cordura and filled with special foam, which after deformation always returns to its original shape. As a result, the rover is not only able to negotiate difficult terrain but it also doesn’t get buried in the sand.

In September, the rover will take part in the European Rover Challenge, to be held in Kielce.