UCF hosts annual NASA Lunabotics qualification challenge focused on lunar exploration

By Jayden Hermitt, Staff Writer

June 2, 2026

The University of Central Florida hosted NASA’s Lunabotics qualification challenge for the third year in a row at UCF’s Exolith lab on May 14.

The Lunabotics Challenge is a collegiate engineering competition that tasks teams with designing lunar robots for future space infrastructure needs and aims to advance engineering education through hands-on experience.

This year’s competition hosted 47 teams from universities across the country to design, build and operate a 125-pound rover robot prototype that performs construction tasks in a lunar-surface environment. After qualifiers, the top 10 teams advance to compete in the championship round at the Kennedy Space Center. Teams aim to build a lunar rover to perform construction tasks in future space exploration efforts.

The goal of the competition was to collect and deposit as much simulated lunar soil, or regolith, as possible within a designated competition zone. Teams are tasked to build a raised hill of dirt, or berm, which provides protection from UV and ejected regolith.

Teams are scored across several performance categories designed to reflect the challenges of operating machinery on the moon, such as energy consumption, durability in dust conditions and the rover’s ability to operate autonomously with minimal intervention.

The National Center for Simulation (NCS) provided volunteer support for the qualifications challenge. Abbie Easter, business operations manager for NCS and volunteer judge for the event, emphasized the importance of recruiting students who could one day contribute to the future of space exploration.

“As we look forward to what the rest of space exploration looks like, it’s really important that we recruit this young talent,” Easter said.

Easter said the competition is a big recruiting opportunity for students, as they get to interact with Caterpillar members in hopes of future employment opportunities. Caterpillar, a manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, sponsors the qualification challenge.

“Several Caterpillar employees working the event actually participated in Lunabotics, and then they come back and judge,” Easter said. “It’s really awesome.”

Neal Finkelstein, Ph.D., chief operating officer at NCS, said the competition provides students with the opportunity to get real-world experience in the field of space exploration.

“It’s all about getting students’ hands-on experience, so that they’re physically, mentally and emotionally immersed,” Finkelstein said.

 Finkelstein added the competition serves as an excellent way for students to improve their own designs by being around each other.

 “I think it’s really important to maximize the time that these schools are together so that they can learn from each other,” Finkelstein said. “Learning to add from other people’s designs or improving your system is an interim ability.”