NASA has awarded a total of $535,000 to seven teams that competed in the agency’s Space Robotics Challenge. The teams developed code to help advance state-of-the-art autonomous robotics for future space exploration missions.

This final round of the challenge opened in January. Each team was led by a U.S. citizen, an eligibility requirement of the competition. Teams coordinated and coded various robotic systems within a virtual, simulated lunar environment. The virtual robots needed to locate, collect, and haul resources to their “home base” on the Moon – all without human interference. A panel of subject matter experts from NASA and industry scored each team based on the number of resources the autonomous bots identified, excavated, and delivered to their targeted base.