SpaceTeam AGH wins Over the Dusty Moon Challenge

The competition task involved transporting lunar regolith over a distance of five meters and a height of three meters. Each participating team demonstrated their prototype systems to the judging committee, which evaluated the amount of transported regolith, system mass, energy consumption, autonomy, and overall performance. 

Building such a construction was no easy task, considering the conditions on the Moon - the lack of atmosphere, one-sixth of Earth's gravity, and very low temperatures. Regolith itself poses a challenging opponent - fine, sharp, highly powdery lunar dust, i.e. a layer of loose, weathered rock covering the Earth and other rocky planets. 

The system created by the AGH students transported over 50 kg of material and weighed slightly over 60 kg. The design combines a bucket conveyor for vertical transport with a scraper chain system that moves the excavated material to a specified location. 

Our students competed against teams from the USA, Germany, Australia (second place), and an international team named Spaceship EAC representing the European Space Agency, which took third place. 

The Over the Dusty Moon Challenge competition took place at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, USA, from 31st May to 1st June 2023. It was the second edition of the competition. 

In last year's edition, SpaceTeam AGH secured second place. The team is supervised by Professor Piotr Kulinowski from the Department of Machinery Engineering and Transport at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics.