The ERC is a European variation of the prestigious University Rover Challenge, organized in the USA by The Mars Society – a contest that has seen a number of successful Polish teams. The list of 24 teams registered for ERC 2014 includes teams from Poland, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Australia, Colombia, Canada, the US and the UK. Advised by the faculty, they must design and build analogues of Mars rovers, which will be presented to the Jury and take on four tasks simulating Mars exploration.
The three-day long conference “Humans in Space” is also officially endorsed as one of the annual European conferences of The Mars Society, the Rover Challenge organizer. Conference topics will focus on the human element of future planetary space missions with numerous presentations and panel discussions, devoted to the future of Mars exploration, as well as space industry innovation, entrepreneurship, medicine and education.
‘We invite all potential conference speakers to send abstracts of their papers by June 10th. Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin and Jerzy Achimowicz, associate professor at the Military Institute of Aviation Medicine in Warsaw have confirmed their participation as speakers. G. Scott Hubbard, previously the director of NASA’s Ames Research Center and currently a Stanford University professor, has also accepted our invitation.’ – says Łukasz Wilczyński from Mars Society Polska.
Detailed information about both conference speaker applications and the registration process can be found at the official website: European Rover Challenge
The event is organized by Mars Society Polska, in cooperation with Planet PR, the Marshal Office of the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, and the Regional Science-Technology Centre in Podzamcze near Chęciny. The Polish National Centre for Research and Development, the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development, Com Creation, Axis Communications, the Austrian Space Forum and ABM Space Education are event Partners. The Polish Ministry of Economy and the European Commission Representation in Poland have taken honorary patronage over the event.
