Mars Rover Design Team Project: Athena

About the Team

We are the Missouri S&T Mars Rover Design Team, a dedicated group of students who design, build, and compete with advanced Mars Rovers in the international University Rover Challenge (URC). Our mission is to push the boundaries of engineering and science through hands-on experience, innovation, and teamwork, while inspiring the next generation of explorers.

Competition - URC

The University Rover Challenge is an international competition hosted at the Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville Utah. Where Teams from around the world compete in a variety of tasks that challenge the capabilities of prototype mars rovers. The first task was Equipment Servicing that requires precision under the pressure of time. Flipping switches, connecting components and completing mechanical tasks that demand both foresight and discipline.

Next is the Autonomy. The rover is tasked to autonomously pilot itself using just the code we had written and the experience that had been tested. This task requires the rover to navigate rugged terrain, identify markers, and make decisions entirely on its own. After that is the Science mission. In this mission, we are required to collect samples, analyze soil composition, evaluate potential biosignatures, and defend our conclusions to a panel of judges. The final mission is Delivery; requiring consistency. In this task, the rover must navigate extended terrain, transport payloads, and maintain signal stability. It’s an endurance test challenging is not the complexity of any one subsystem, but the sustained performance across all of them. 

Team's History

Since our founding in 2012, MRDT has consistently ranked among the world’s top teams:

1st place at URC in 2017 and 2025 with Gryphon and Talos

2nd place in 2018 with Atlas

3rd place in 2021 with Aurora

4th place in 2024 with Hyperion

2026 Competition Submission

Athena is our 14th rover building upon our legacy of success with cutting-edge technology. Built for high performance in extreme terrain, Athena features a lightweight, compact frame and an optimized Mantis suspension system that allows it to navigate steep slopes, rocky landscapes, and tight pathways with stability and precision. Its compliant wheels improve traction and control, while 360-degree camera gimbals give operators full visibility. A versatile robotic arm enables Athena to pick up and transport objects, making it well-suited for a wide range of mission tasks.

The rover is supported by a flexible basestation system that allows operators to monitor and control missions from multiple devices through a dynamic interface. Communication is maintained through a smart network that automatically selects between 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz radios for optimal performance, while a custom protocol ensures efficient data transfer across all systems. Athena also integrates a drone, Noctua, which can scout terrain, identify targets, and act as a signal repeater to restore connectivity when needed. Internally, a distributed electrical system with real-time monitoring, active cooling, and hot-swappable batteries ensures reliability and minimal downtime in the field.

Athena’s advanced autonomy and science capabilities further enhance its mission effectiveness. Using differential GPS, stereo cameras, LIDAR data, and machine learning models, the rover can navigate autonomously, avoid obstacles, and detect objects or markers with high accuracy. Its robotic arm performs complex tasks like operating equipment, collecting samples, and precise manipulation using smart motor controllers. For scientific exploration, Athena is equipped with subsurface and surface sampling tools, including an auger, fluorescent microscope, and Raman spectrometer, allowing it to analyze soil composition and detect organic and inorganic compounds while documenting findings with onboard imaging and GPS data.

System Acceptance Review

Acknowledgment

We would be honored to collaborate with PCBWay and improve this year's rover Athena. This partnership would allow us to design to our fullest extent and compete at the highest level. PCBWay's support would go towards directly to growing and developing the next generation of engineers, scientists and leaders.