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\t\t\t\t\t\t22\/10\/2026<\/span> A small rover is alone on the Moon, with no signal and no idea of its position. All it has is a panoramic camera and an aerial map of the Moon\u2019s surface. The lunar night is fast approaching\u2026 can you help the rover find its way before it\u2019s too late?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In their Lunar X-view challenge launching on 1 November 2026, the European Space Agency\u2019s Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) present the space community with a simple but dramatic scenario.<\/p>\n Dario Izzo, ACT\u2019s scientific coordinator, sets the scene: \u201cA rover is alone on the Moon, has no contact with Earth and is unsure of its position. Armed only with a ground-level panorama and an orbital map, it must work out where it is before the lunar night arrives.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The challenge presented to the space community is to design an algorithm that can match a ground-level panoramic image (taken by the imaginary rover\u2019s camera) with a lunar surface image (taken by a satellite orbiting the Moon) to pinpoint the rover\u2019s exact location.<\/p>\n This is more than an academic exercise \u2013 when a rover knows exactly where it is, it can explore farther and reach scientific targets autonomously.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n At NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, researchers have already developed and tested a system that matches panoramas from the Perseverance Mars rover with orbital maps to correct accumulated positioning errors. ESA\u2019s lunar challenge brings a similar navigation problem to the wider scientific community.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cThe competition is run through the ACT\u2019s Kelvins website, a portal dedicated to hosting public aerospace challenges. Just like the challenges we hosted in the past, it is open to space enthusiasts from all over the world,\u201d adds Dario.<\/p>\n \u201cThe lesson we learned from our past competitions, such as the Pose Estimation challenges, ELOPE and the Collision Avoidance Challenge, is clear: hand the scientific community a hard problem and a scoreboard, and it will deliver in months what no single team could in years.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Stefano Silvestrini from Politecnico di Milano helped design the competition. \u201cI see it as an opportunity for lunar rovers to grow up: to leave the comfort of constant navigation support and learn to find their own way. Go and explore, without GPS or guidance from Earth,\u201d he comments.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The Lunar X-view competition is run by ESA\u2019s Advanced Concepts Team, the agency\u2019s multidisciplinary think tank focusing on emerging technologies, in collaboration with the Institute of Science Tokyo, University of Adelaide and Politecnico di Milano.<\/p>\n The datasets and competition rules will be made available on 1 November 2026 through the competition website. Participation is free and open to everyone, and all submissions will be scored automatically on the platform.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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