It starts with pedals, planning and a punishing test track.

NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge, now in its 32nd year, brought 600 students together to design, build and test rovers on an Earth obstacle course as they worked on ideas for future travel on the moon.

Each year, students from around the world take part in the nine-month challenge, designing and building human-powered or remote-controlled rovers that could travel across the moon’s surface.

After months of designing, developing, building and testing, teams faced the final event in Huntsville, Alabama, home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

At the April 2026 event, students drove or remotely operated their rovers through a specially designed 0.8-kilometre obstacle course to test how they might fare on the lunar surface.

HERC is open to students from middle school to college age. This year, participants came from 28 colleges and universities, 13 high schools and one middle school.

In total, 44 teams took part.

NASA said the event gives students from different ages and backgrounds the chance to work on space science problems, such as “how will we get around on the moon?”

As part of the challenge, NASA gives teams access to subject matter experts and space industry professionals to guide them through the project.

Before reaching the obstacle course, teams also had to complete a design review, an operational readiness review, a mission readiness review and an excursion readiness review, similar to how real spaceflight hardware is developed.

NASA said the challenge gives students “a uniquely realistic look at what it might take to really get a piece of technology ready for the moon.”

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