title: Review, judging and awards description: The 2027 review chain: the design review, the 100-point acceptance review, the science and chemical safety plans and the awards. part: The competition chapter: "2.5" toc_depth: 3 tags: - review - judging - awards - documentation

Review, judging and awards

The 2027 season can be lost at a desk. The System Acceptance Review carries 100 of the 500 points and decides which 36 teams are invited to the field at all, and the Preliminary Design Review before it shapes the judges’ view of whether a team will be ready. Between them sit the science plan, the chemical safety plan and the Rover Expense Report, each with its own deadline and its own consequences. This page sets out what each milestone asks for, what the published 2026 rubrics value, and how the cut has actually fallen.

The milestone chain

Every date below is fixed in the 2027 rulebook S-URC27-RULES. The chemical safety plan has no separate date and is documented alongside the Science Plan.

The Preliminary Design Review

The Preliminary Design Review (PDR) is a readiness review, not a scored mission. The rulebook describes it as an assessment of each team’s overall likelihood of being ready in time, judged on its own merits rather than against other teams S-URC27-RULES §3.a.ii. The 2027 requirements page is still pending, so the 2026 document is the only published format S-URC27-PDR-PAGE S-URC26-PDR.

The 2026 format was five pages: pages 1 and 2 for text and graphics, pages 3 to 5 for graphics and captions only, letter paper with margins of at least 1 inch, Calibri 11 pt or similar, single spaced, submitted as a PDF through a form, with a header block naming the team, university, city, country and student lead S-URC26-PDR. Reports were reviewed on a rolling basis before the deadline, and format violations or missing citations carried penalties.

The judges’ own comments are the most useful part of the 2026 document. Most historical PDR feedback concerned teams that did not follow the instructions. Blank pages, a Gantt chart of milestones rather than tasks, a budget drawn as a pie chart, outreach merged into recruiting, and a plan that only states that a plan exists were all named in the guidance as things to avoid. Past success is explicitly not a substitute for addressing the required elements.

The System Acceptance Review

The rule fixes the character of the review rather than its rubric. It focuses on demonstration of the capabilities and customisation of the rover for each mission, it is judged against other teams, and the 36 highest scores are invited to the field S-URC27-RULES §3.a.iii. The 2027 requirements page still says they will be posted in early 2027 S-URC27-SAR-PAGE.

The 2026 rubric is the best available model of what the 2027 one will value S-URC26-SAR. It splits 100 points across three components.

The report was seven pages with a fixed page map: pages 1 to 4 free, page 5 for the Gantt chart only, page 6 for the Project Budget Table only, and page 7 for the science plan only. Content after page 7 was not considered, and text in figures had to be legible at 250 % zoom S-URC26-SAR. The project-management weight is worth noting: the Gantt chart and the budget table together carry 8 of the 40 report points, as much as the system architecture.

The video was a single film of five minutes or less, publicly accessible and searchable. Audio quality was described as imperative even at the expense of image quality, music was strongly discouraged, and every clip had to be captioned with the month and year it was recorded. Footage from before September of the current cycle was treated as weaker evidence, and a clip of a superseded architecture was assumed not to apply to the current rover. Accelerated segments had to display their speed for the whole segment, and the judges warned explicitly against zooming in on an end effector without showing the whole arm integrated on the rover.

Because the weights are published, the five minutes can be budgeted S-URC26-SAR. At 48 points over 300 seconds, each point is worth about 6.25 seconds of film.

The time guide is this reference’s reading of the rubric, not a URC instruction. The weights are URC’s.

The science plan and the chemical safety plan

Two documents carry the science case, and they are scored in different places.

The 2026 May plan structure is the only detailed one published: a cover page naming the science sub-team and the status of the chemical safety plan, at most a page of basic Mars knowledge, at most a page of background research, up to two pages on the payload and its justification, and at most a page answering one question from a fixed list S-URC26-SCIPLAN. The judges warned that they will ask one of those questions, or a similar one, at the Astrobiology debrief after the mission.

The Chemical Safety Plan is a per-chemical record, not a declaration. The 2026 document required a named chemical safety officer and up to two alternates travelling to the finals, a training acknowledgement, and for each chemical: its name and concentration, the amount needed per reaction, storage and secondary containment, protective equipment, a justification for its use, a disposal route naming a specific licensed facility, spill prevention and incident response, and safety data sheets both linked and carried on site. Mercury-containing chemicals were prohibited outright. The 2027 rulebook keeps the no-spill policy and requires hazardous chemicals to be pre-approved with a plan covering transport, use, disposal and accidents S-URC27-RULES S-URC27-QA §1.b.ix AQ4.

The practical reading is that the chemistry choice is a project-level decision with a paperwork tail measured in weeks. It has to be settled early enough to write both plans and to name a disposal facility that will actually accept the waste.

The expense report and the fielded-equipment cap

Two financial documents are required, and they are not the same document. The Project Budget Table in the PDR and the review covers the whole year’s project. The final Rover Expense Report covers only the fielded rover and must show it inside the $26,000 cap S-URC27-RULES §3.c.i §3.c.iii.

The report has to follow a work-breakdown structure, and URC publishes a template S-URC27-REQPAGE S-URC-EXPENSE-TEMPLATE. The template runs from node 0.0 total rover cost through frame, drive and energy, electronics, command and control, arm, science payload and miscellaneous parts, with a cost rule on every line that records how the value was obtained. Two categories the 2027 cap covers have no node in the template: the drone and the astronaut EVA suit. A team reporting either has to add a top-level line.

The judges’ guidance adds two valuation points that catch teams out. Services donated by a supplier must be valued at a quote for the full value of the work, and sponsorship is reported split into financial and in-kind contributions S-URC-BUDGETGANTT S-URC26-SAR. Equipment reused from a previous rover is valued at its original cost or at the price of a new equivalent, not at zero.

Awards

Two awards sit outside the 500-point score, and neither can rescue a weak review.

The INCOSE Foundation Excellence in Systems Engineering Award was created in 2026, is explicitly separate from competition scoring, and judges systems engineering maturity on its own S-URC-INCOSE. In its first year, every finalist report was pre-screened against a 100-point rubric of eight categories: systems thinking and stakeholder focus 15, requirements engineering 15, system architecture and design 15, V&V strategy 12, technical management and planning 10, risk and configuration management 10, systems modelling and analysis 8, and documentation quality 15. Thirteen teams scoring at least 80 became finalists. The on-site round used a second 100-point rubric of ten categories, with 78 points from a 30-minute interview and 22 from competition observation, and the combined score weighted the pre-screen and the final round equally with a threshold of 75. The 2026 winner was Michigan Mars Rover of the University of Michigan. The thirteen 2026 finalists were A.S.T.R.A. (UAH), BYU Mars Rover, Husky Robotics (Washington), KNR Rover Team (Warsaw), Missouri S&T, Michigan Mars Rover, Monash Nova Rover, MR2 (KAIST), Northeastern, Queen’s Space Engineering Team, Robotics for Space Exploration (Toronto), Team Mountaineers (WVU) and Team RoSE (Hawaii).

The John Barainca Memorial Award for Outstanding Scientist commemorates a founding member of The Mars Society who helped select the MDRS site and served as Hab manager S-MARS-INMEMORIAM. No criteria document or rubric for the award is published. The 2026 winner was Grant Quartuccio of A.S.T.R.A. at the University of Alabama in Huntsville S-URC26-SCORES-PAGE S-URC26-NEWS. The award is won in the Astrobiology debrief, which is scored on astrobiology knowledge and on what the data mean for the presence or absence of life, and which takes place even if the rover failed its field tasks (§1.b.x).

How the cut has fallen

The official score sheets carry a review score for every finalist, so the lowest admitted score is visible even though rejected teams are not published. That gives an upper bound on the cut line.

The 2023 to 2025 cut sat between 84 and 87, which means a first-time team had to land within a few points of the field’s median to be safe S-URC23-SCORES S-URC24-SCORES S-URC25-SCORES. The 2026 low of 75.86 is not comparable: it is the first year of the rebuilt rubric, and a fall of more than ten points from the 2025 low reads more plausibly as a re-based rubric than as a weaker field S-URC26-SAR S-URC26-SCORES.

Two mechanical facts about the cut matter as much as its level. The rule says 36 teams, and the judges expanded the field to 37 in 2023 and 38 in each year from 2024 to 2026 when scores clustered; there is no standby list for withdrawals S-URC23-NEWS S-URC24-NEWS S-URC25-NEWS S-URC26-NEWS. A team should therefore plan against a cut at 36 and treat any expansion as unearned.

What the 2027 documents do not yet say

• The 2027 PDR requirements page says only that the document will be posted in the near future S-URC27-PDR-PAGE.
• The 2027 review requirements page says the requirements will be posted in early 2027, so the 40/48/12 split and the sub-criteria are unconfirmed S-URC27-SAR-PAGE.
• The 2027 Science Plan specification is not published beyond the Q&A note that the May plan expands the review version and runs to about five pages S-URC27-SCIPLAN-PAGE S-URC27-QA AQ1.
• Whether the review report keeps a single-page science plan and a seven-page limit is unknown.
• Whether the review page six must carry a work-breakdown expense table, which was optional in 2026, is unknown.
• Whether a team can be removed at the PDR stage is unknown. The rules describe the PDR as non-competitive and no published page describes a team being cut there.
• The 2027 INCOSE criteria are promised earlier than in 2026 but were not published as of 2026-10-25 S-URC-INCOSE.

What the judges reward

The published guidance is unusually consistent across both desk milestones.

1. Demonstrated, current, integrated capability. A capability that is not shown on camera cannot be scored, recent footage outranks old footage, and a superseded design does not support a current one S-URC26-SAR.
2. Evidence of readiness. The PDR asks whether a team will be ready, and the review spends 4 of its 12 judges’ points on readiness to compete S-URC26-PDR S-URC26-SAR.
3. Ruggedness for MDRS. Four of the 12 judges’ points, and the advice page returns to dust, heat, shock and field repair repeatedly S-URC-ADVICE.
4. Novelty and scope of work. Another 4 of the 12 judges’ points S-URC26-SAR.
5. Systems engineering discipline. Traceability, architecture, V&V, risk and configuration management sit across most of the INCOSE rubric S-URC-INCOSE.
6. Following the instructions exactly. The most-cited PDR feedback cause, and a stated penalty trigger in both reviews S-URC26-PDR S-URC26-SAR.

The failure modes are the mirror image: a marketing film with no evidence, ignoring the page or time limits, a plan that only states a plan exists, missing or unfindable citations, an engineering page written about science or the reverse, a budget table drawn as a chart, and a per-subteam Gantt chart that reads as absent integration.

Further reading

• Rules, limits and the field states the clauses behind each deadline and penalty.
• Missions and scoring shows where the review’s 100 points sit against the four missions.
• The 2027 competition places the milestones in the season.
• Deadlines and milestones collects every date in one place.
• Systems engineering and integration covers the process evidence the review looks for.
• The Q&A record carries the rulings on the science plan, the review and the expense report.