Polish rover wins Mars Challenge
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
06.06.2011 13:10
The Magma 2 rover has won the prestigious University Rover Challenge competition for college students to design and build the next generation of Mars exploration craft.
Magma 2’s creators, a team from the Technical University in Bialystok, north-eastern Poland beat Canadians from York University and Americans from the Oregon State University.
Other Polish robots to enter the competition - Scorpio constructed at the Technical University in Wrocław and Copernicus from the Mikołaj Kopernik University in Torun - took fourth and sixth places respectively.
The three rovers from Poland were the only vehicles from Europe that qualified for the challenge.
The 2011 Mars Society’s University Rover Challenge was held between 2 and 4 June at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.
During the three days of the contests robots had to perform complicated tasks, including terrain reconnaissance, looking for traces of life in soil samples nd delivering medical help to an injured astronaut.
Apart from financial awards, the winners of the challenge will have the chance to present their machine during the Mars Society Convention with the participation of experts from NASA. (di/pg)