CRATER BUILDS ETH'S FIRST ROVER AT SWITZERLAND INNOVATION PARK ZURICH

At Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich, more than 70 ETH students are building ETH Zurich's first autonomous Mars rover for the European Rover Challenge 2026 in Krakow.

«The ETH Hangar at Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich provides more than the infrastructure to build a rover. It offers an ecosystem where ambitious ideas meet the people and exper-tise needed to bring them to life. This community played a key role in turning CRATER from an idea into a working project and will remain a foundation as the team continues to grow.»

Vala Shkreli

Co-Founder and Co-President, CRATER

In summer 2025, a group of ETH Zurich students started with an ambitious idea: to contribute to future space exploration in a practical, hands-on way. Their first concept focused on producing fuel on the Moon. The team soon realised, however, that before such a mission could be imagined, one core capability was missing: a rover. This became the starting point for CRATER, ETH Zurich's first student-led autonomous Mars rover initiative. Today, more than 70 students from around ten departments work across robotics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer vision, autonomous navigation, drone systems, sampling and scientific exploration.

CRATER's immediate goal is to design, build and compete with ETH Zurich's first autonomous rover at the European Rover Challenge 2026 in Krakow, Poland. On a Mars-like test field, the rover must demonstrate capabilities inspired by real planetary exploration missions: autonomous navigation, drilling, sample collection and analysis, robotic manipulation, mission-support tasks and interaction with a drone. The project is organised like a young engineering company, with eight technical subteams developing mission-critical systems such as drilling and sampling, astrobiology, powertrain, robotic arm, robotic platform, navigation and controls, and an autonomous drone.

Beyond the technical challenge of building a rover from scratch, CRATER gives students hands-on experience in systems engineering. Success depends not only on designing individual sub-systems, but on integrating them into a reliable system that can accomplish complex mission objectives. Coordinating interfaces, responsibilities and mission strategies across different subteams closely reflects the challenges of developing real Mars missions. 

As a newly founded initiative, CRATER has had to grow far beyond the technical aspects of rover development. Alongside designing and building the rover, students engage with sponsors, organize events, manage partnerships, and shape the organization's long-term direction. This lean, fast-paced environment provides an experience similar to that of a start-up, where students learn to collaborate across disciplines, make engineering trade-offs, manage risk, and deliver complex hardware projects as a team. 

Looking beyond the European Rover Challenge, CRATER aims to evolve into a long-term platform for space robotics research and education. Although some aspects of planetary missions cannot be reproduced as a student team, the team increasingly incorporates space-relevant engineering requirements wherever they can be realistically tested.

Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich plays a practical role in this journey. The ETH Hangar gives CRATER access to a hardtech environment with workshop space, shared labs, outdoor testing areas and proximity to engineering, robotics and aerospace expertise. The project connects two of the Park's focus areas - Space & Aviation and Robotics & Mobility - and gives ambitious student engineers the setting they need to build, test, fail, adapt and improve. From Duebendorf to the European Rover Challenge, CRATER shows how Switzerland's innovation ecosystem can help students move beyond classroom theory and build complex autonomous systems with relevance for space exploration, robotics and future deeptech entrepreneurship.

CRATER is actively recruiting students who want to turn their passion for space and robotics into hands-on engineering experience. Students from all backgrounds are welcome to collaborate, learn, and contribute to the future of space robotics. Apply here.  

Key Facts

  • 0

    students - A multidisciplinary ETH Zurich team working across around ten departments

  • 0

    technical subteams

Please accept marketing cookies to watch this video.

Explore More Success Stories