A group of University of Sheffield engineers are the only team in the country to have reached the final of an international competition to build a mars rover.
The student-led team ‘MarsWorks’ passed the design report stage of the Anatolian Rover Challenge, and will compete in Istanbul against 13 other teams from around the world this week.
Anna Pawinska, project leader and operations sub-team leader, said: “It’s an incredible achievement for us seeing as the project stood still for the past two years, due to Covid, and now our design report is scoring the highest out of all participants.
“We’re honoured to be the only UK team and we’re sure we can make the University, and the country, proud with our performance.”
The team started the academic year with just four members, and now has five sub-teams each with a sub-team leader, and has completely redesigned the rover they built in 2020.
Ms Pawinska added: “Naturally, I’m very excited about competing and seeing our rover perform. It’s an honour to represent the University of Sheffield in an international arena.”
MarsWorks have recently founded the Sheffield Space Initiative society, to bring together all space-oriented student-led projects at the university.
The development sub-team also built a smaller version of the rover, for school visits and outreach activities to encourage young people across the region to consider a career in engineering.
Reuben Mitchell, Development sub-team Leader and co-project leader, said: “There have been many students who have sacrificed their spare time this year to work on designing, manufacturing and programming the rover and they deserve to have their hard work displayed on a big platform.
“It’s been an honour to lead the team this year and I’m already looking forward to improving the design next year based on the performance in Istanbul.”
The competition, which has been organised by the Space Exploration Society (UKET), will be held at the Istanbul Technical University Campus between the 22nd and 25th of July.
