A sun barely peeking over a cratered horizon, casting long shadows across a rocky moonscape: ESA's Erasmus Innovation Center was transformed into an analog of the moon's polar regions, in a dress rehearsal for an international rover competition.

The Space Resources Challenge—supported by ESA and the European Space Resources Innovation Center (ESRIC) in Luxembourg- is asking European (and Canadian) researchers and institutions to develop and demonstrate a system of one or more vehicles capable of prospecting resources on the moon in the near future.

Some 13 teams have been selected to participate in the Challenge's first field test in November, with €375 000 in ESA contracts to be awarded to the five winners, with a larger prize pool on offer after a follow-on field test next year.

"The focus here is really on prospecting—pinpointing promising resources within a difficult lunar environment then characterizing them in as much detail as possible, such as through spectral analysis," comments Massimo Sabbatini, managing the Erasmus Center, part of ESA's ESTEC technical center in the Netherlands.

"We're preparing for the first rover field test in November, which will take place in a larger location, still to be disclosed, but we decided to try out the challenge for ourselves first, here at Erasmus.