Critical Design Review for the Australian Rover Challenge 2026
This week, we submitted our Critical Design Review (CDR)—the first major milestone we must pass to compete in the Australian Rover Challenge (ARCh)! The CDR is a high-level assessment of the Rover’s intended systems, demonstrating that our overall design not only meets the ARCh rules and requirements but is also capable of performing effectively during each nominated challenge.
The Adelaide Rover Team at the Australian Rover Challenge 2025. Photo by Taylor Parham.
We’ve nominated to participate in all four challenges:
Post-landing task: Simulates a rover exiting the lunar lander module and performing general maintenance operations. This includes connecting fuel hoses and power cables, and receiving RFID-encoded instructions to interact with and repair a faulty console.
Autonomous and tracking task: Requires the rover to navigate the field without human control and generate a 3D map referencing landmarks across the field. Being able to autonomously map areas with rovers allows astronauts to focus on the more articulate tasks back at base.
Excavation and construction task: Involves clearing rock debris, excavating simulated regolith into a berm (a protective mound shielding a site from rocket launches and landings), and deploying tiles to form a road.
Space resources task: Focuses on sensing and quantifying the mineral ilmenite (composed of iron and titanium), as well as detecting and extracting water ice. Through the principles of in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU), extracting minerals from the lunar surface provides materials to construct new equipment and structures on the moon, and water provides drinking water, a source of oxygen, and the components of rocket fuel to launch further out into the solar system.
To tackle these tasks, the rover’s systems have been developed through the collaborative efforts of our mechanical, electrical, and software engineering teams. Each system is supported by a dedicated team of 2 to 6 members, each contributing their expertise to generate innovative solutions for their specific sub-component. The final design must integrate these subsystems seamlessly—ensuring not only that each functions as intended, but that they work cohesively within the rover as a whole.
We expect to receive our final CDR score in a few weeks. In the meantime, we’re taking a short break from development while our members focus on exams. Stay tuned for the results of our CDR and updates as we move toward the next key milestone!