"Australian Public Invited to Design First Moon Rover, 'Roo-ver'"
Australia's first lunar rover, named "Roo-ver," is set to launch to the moon as early as 2026 as part of NASA's Artemis program. The public is invited to help design the rover's Regolith Sample Acquisition Device, which will collect lunar soil samples for NASA's research on extracting oxygen from regolith. A naming competition resulted in "Roo-ver" being chosen, and a design challenge hosted by Freelancer.com and ELO2 is underway, with Phase 1 winners announced and Phase 2 currently accepting submissions. The rover is expected to land near the lunar south pole and spend 14 Earth days collecting samples.