PARIS, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- A robot rover designed by a Bremen University team has won a European Space Agency contest to retrieve soil samples from a lunar-style terrestrial crater.
The competition involving eight European student teams was held at Tenerife's Teide National Park.
The ESA said each rover was built within strict size, weight and power constraints. The machines had to descend a 40-degree slope of a nearly 50-foot-deep crater, grab a sample 0.1 kg of specifically selected soil and carry it out of the crater -- with the entire process taking place in darkness.
The ESA said only one rover managed to complete the assignment: Bremen's three-wheeled Crater Exploration and Sample Return, known as CESAR.
"Only six months ago most of the rovers were only at drawing board level," said Lucio Scollamiero, one of the competition's jurists. "What the student teams have done in such a short time has been a challenge in itself; they all deserve to be considered winners of this challenge."
The eight rover teams will share their experiences later this month in Noordwijk, Netherlands, during the ESA's 10th Workshop on Advanced Space Technologies for Robotics and Automation.
