NASAs Eighth Annual NASA Robotic Mining Competition is for university-level students to design and build a mining robot that can traverse the simulated Martian chaotic terrain, excavate Martian regolith and deposit the regolith into a Collector Bin within 10 minutes. There is particular relevance to NASAs mission of pioneering a human presence on Mars through resource mining and utilization. A critical resource on Mars is water ice which can be found buried in the regolith where it is well insulated. The technology concepts developed by the university teams for this competition conceivably could be used to robotically mine regolith resources on Mars. NASA will directly benefit from the competition by encouraging the development of innovative robotic excavation concepts from universities which may result in clever ideas and solutions which could be applied to an actual excavation device or payload. The unique physical properties of basaltic regolith and the reduced 3/8th of Earth gravity make excavation a difficult technical challenge. Advances in Martian mining have the potential to significantly contribute to our nations space vision and NASA space exploration operations.

The complexities of the challenge include the abrasive characteristics of the basaltic regolith simulant, the weight and size limitations of the mining robot, and the ability to tele-operate it from a remote mission control center. The scoring for the mining category will require teams to consider a number of design and operation factors such as dust tolerance and dust projection, communications, vehicle mass, energy/power required, and autonomy.

The competition will be conducted by NASA at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The teams that can use telerobotic or autonomous operation to excavate the basaltic regolith simulant, called Black Point-1 or BP-1, and score the most points wins the Joe Kosmo Award for Excellence. The team will receive the Joe Kosmo Award for Excellence trophy, KSC launch invitations, team certificates for each member, and a $5,000 team scholarship. Awards for other categories include monetary team scholarships, a school trophy or plaque, team and individual certificates, and KSC launch invitations.