A Team Of Indian Students Has Ranked Near The Top Of Mars Rover Design Teams In The World

As we prepare to take humans to Mars, we're first going to need a few more rovers scoping out the planet for water, minerals, building space, and the like.

And it seems like some of the best new rover designs out there are coming out of India.

Images courtesy: Manipal Academy of Higher Education/Facebook

The Mars Rover Manipal (MRM) team is comprised of a group of students from Manipal Institute of Technology. They recently participated in a US-based rover design competition in Utah, called the University Rover Challenge. Turns out, they've managed to secure one of the contest's top prizes.

In partnership with Mouser Electronics and Echjay Industries, MRM was chosen the winner from among the Asian challengers in the competition. They also snagged the 8th place among the 84 global participants, as well as the Barainca award for the best science team in the competition.

MRM was one of only five Indian teams to make it to the final stage of the rover design challenge this year, along with IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, VIT Vellore and SRM. It's also the fourth consecutive year they've placed among the top 36 international teams.

Building a Mars rover

The competition requires these rovers to be built to certain specifications. For one, they need to be able to traverse a simulated Martian terrain, and perform basic tasks involved with the experimentation these rovers are required to do on Mars. Specifically, the four design goals include completing a Science mission, Autonomous Traversal mission, Extreme Retrieval and Delivery Mission and Equipment Servicing mission.

"It was great to see the hard work by the team has brought success," said the team co-leader Safal Ajmera, who heads the group with colleague V Sai Shyam. "We got to learn and make everyone proud. The feeling of representing the institute and country cannot be expressed.