Cornell Mars Rover

About

Cornell Mars Rover, since its establishment in 2010, aims to design an innovative semi-autonomous rover to compete in the University Rover Challenge each year. Our student-run team fosters creativity and intellectual growth through the development of our rover. As engineers, we strive to cultivate a creative environment where brilliant young minds can develop innovative, intellectual, and leadership qualities through our vision of building a rover that may one day aid in the exploration of the final frontier.

The team is divided into several sub-teams: Drives, Arm, AstroTech, Controls Software, Controls Electrical, and Business & Design. Students can best use their specific skill sets to contribute to the project and are given the opportunity to learn from others in other disciplines. 

University Rover Challenge

The University Rover Challenge is held annually by The Mars Society at the Mars Desert Research Station, Utah. CMR will be competing in the University Rover Challenge in Summer 2024. We hope to follow the success we have established in the past years, as we came in 2nd place in Equipment Servicing in 2017, 5th in Autonomous Transversal in 2018, and 3rd in Autonomous Transversal in 2019. We aim to take what we learned in past years' campaigns and apply it to this year's competition.

Several universities from across the globe will be competing against Cornell Mars Rover in four tasks: Science Mission, Extreme Delivery, Equipment Servicing, and Autonomous Navigation. The winner will receive the honor of presenting their rover at the International Mars Society's Conference. 

How you can help!

Each year, Cornell Mars Rover aims to improve on the previous iterations of the rovers for a new rover. This includes reviewing the competition performance, discussing potential improvements, preparing new designs, fabricating the new rover, and finally testing the rover for different tasks. 

We require funds to acquire equipment for testing different alternatives for various components, manufacturing the rover, and traveling to the competition in Utah. Your donations would allow our members to experiment with state-of-the-art technologies during our design process, which will not only help us create a better rover, but will also help students emerge as better and more qualified engineers after they leave us. Furthermore, traveling to the competition would also unlock a vast network of like-minded students and professionals in the industry for our members. Your contribution would, therefore, contribute to our overall mission as an engineering project team and help us reach our goals.

We sincerely hope that you will help us in our endeavors, and thank you for your contribution.

See our website to learn more: marsrover.engineering.cornell.edu/