About

Overview

The Olympus Rover Trials (ORT) challenge student teams to design, construct and operate a rover for an analogue sample return mission to Mars. Students create a rover concept, trade off performance parameters and pass through a rigorous review process with a panel of engineers from the space sector. The competition aims to:

Challenge students to perform a complex systems engineering task of the development of a vehicle to a set of real space mission requirements;
Enable students to apply taught technical skills and learn new ones relevant to a job in the space industry in an applicable project environment;
Provide students with an opportunity to develop and practice other important and transferable skills, such as teamwork, leadership and project management;
Foster interest in the activities of the space sector, especially in space engineering and robotics.

Who Can Participate?

The competition is open to all UKSEDS members. If you are not already a member, sign up for free membership today. This includes students (Bachelors to PhD), and we also support graduate teams (as long as team members have graduated within the last 3 years). Team sizes are limited to 10 but there is no lower team limit. There is no entry fee associated with this competition.

The Challenges

This year we are containing with running two streams for the Olympus Rover Trials: basic and advanced

This approach was taken for two reasons. First, it allows us to double the competition’s capacity for testing on the day and second, it allows us to host a new challenge for returning teams.

The basic stream shall have its competition day hosted at RAL Space and the advanced stream shall be hosted at Airbus Defence and Space.

Which Stream Should We Enter?

The basic stream is designed for teams that are entering the competition for the first time. It is likely that your team doesn’t have much experience to date in the area of robotics and that you shall all be learning as you go.

The advanced stream is designed for returning teams that have previously entered the basic stream that are looking for a step up to challenge them. Your team is likely to have good experience with robotics and are wanting to push the boundaries of what they can do with their skills and a rover.

History

Founded in 2016, the competition was originally called the Lunar Rover Trials. It was originally supported by Thales Alenia Space, RAL Space, GMV and Oxford Space Systems. The competition has more recently taken place between Airbus and RAL Space, utilising the Airbus Mars Yard and RAL Space’s Engineering Test Facilities.

Past Winners

2023-2024

This year, the team launched two streams of the Olympus Rover Trials: basic and advanced

The basic stream competition day was hosted at RAL Space and the advanced stream competition day was hosted at Airbus Defense and Space.

Advanced Stream:

Overall Prize: CranSEDS

Best Innovation: CranSEDS

Best CDR: UKAEA

Basic Stream:

Overall Prize: Queen's University Belfast

Best Innovation: University of Birmingham Dubai

Best CDR: UCL

2022-2023

Overall Prize: University of Bath

Best Innovation: UKAEA

Best CDR: CranSEDS

Best Automation: King's College London

2021-2022

Overall Prize: University of Bath

Best Innovation: UKAEA

Best CDR: Phoenix

Best Presentation: CranSEDS

Best Outreach: University of Leicester

2020-2021

Airbus joined RAL Space in sponsoring the fifth installment of the Olympus Rover Trials. The competition challenges teams to design, build and test small rovers with the objective of navigating a ‘Martian’ surface. This year, the Martian theme evolved from a sample return mission to a new mission - assembling infrastructure on the surface of Mars.

2019-2020

Our fourth rover competition, in partnership with GMV and supported by Thales Alenia Space, RAL Space, and Oxford Space Systems, continued with the same theme as last year: Mars sample return. The competition challenged teams to design, build, and test small rovers with the objective of driving across a ‘Martian’ surface in RAL Space’s Mars Yard facility, to collect canister samples and return them to a lander.

Teams presented their designs at a virtual competition day. SUSF Phobos, from the University of Southampton, were the overall winners. They also picked up prizes for the best Mission Design report and the best Presentation, as well as sharing the best CDR award with Team Bath Roving from the University of Bath.

2018-2019

This was our third rover competition, in partnership with GMV and supported by Thales Alenia Space, RAL Space and Oxford Space Systems. It was rebranded from the Lunar Rover Competition to the Olympus Rover Trials, as we moved the setting from the Moon to Mars.

Team Bath Roving took first place in the competition with a design that made use of a servo-operated robotic arm to collect sample canisters. Additional prizes went to Cranfield University’s Team Furiosity, Imperial College’s Team Ares, and Southampton University Spaceflight.

2017-2018

15 teams entered this year’s Lunar Rover Competition, which was run in association with Thales Alenia Space UK, and supported by Airbus, RAL Space, and Oxford Space Systems. Participants were challenged to design, build and test small rovers which had a mission aim of driving into a ‘lunar’ crater and collecting a sample before returning to the lander.

This competition concluded in July 2018, with 8 out of 15 teams passing their CDR and competing at RAL Space’s Mars Yard. Imperial College London’s team came out on top, winning the competition and the award for the best CDR. The University of Sheffield team won the prize for the best innovation for their advanced scoop mechanism used for sample retrieval, and the University of Manchester team were recognised for their rover-related outreach programme which encouraged more young people to study STEM at school.

2016-2017

This year we launched our first Lunar Rover Competition in association with Thales Alenia Space UK, and supported by Airbus Defence & Space UK, RAL Space, and Oxford Space Systems. The competition challenges teams to design, build, and test small rovers with the objective of driving into a ‘lunar’ crater, collecting a sample, and returning to the lander. 5 teams from across the UK reached the final stage after undergoing a PDR (Preliminary Design Review) and CDR (Critical Design Review) by a panel of space industry experts from Thales Alenia Space in the UK, RAL Space and Oxford Space Systems.

The winners were Surrey EARS with their rover completing both test runs as well as surviving a simulated Falcon 9 launch on the vibration test bed. An additional prize was awarded to the CranSEDS for the best Critical Design Review of the competition.

Honourable mentions go to Bath SpaceSoc, BristolSEDS and ManSEDS for taking part in this first competition. To get to this stage, the teams had to pass a comprehensive review process managed by space industry engineers from Thales Alenia Space in the UK, the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s RAL Space facility and Oxford Space Systems.