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Statistics

Zeros and consistency

A zero is the clearest event in the score data: a team attempted a mission and recorded no points, or did not attempt it at all. Across 162 finals team-years from 2022 to 2026 there are 67 Autonomy zeros, 27 in Equipment Servicing and 25 in Delivery, and not one in Science. The cost is not proportional. A team with no zero averages rank 10.2; one zero moves it to 21.1 and removes about 85 points from the total. That is a step, not a slope, and it is the single strongest pattern in the results.

41.4 %Autonomy zero rate67 of 162 finals team-years2022–2026S-URC-RESULTS
0Science zerosNone in five years2022–2026S-URC-RESULTS
10.2Mean rank with no zeroAgainst 21.1 with one and 29.2 with two2022–2026S-URC-RESULTS
945Mission points lost a yearUpper bound; 610 of them Autonomy2022–2026S-URC-RESULTS

Key takeaways

  • The three hard missions are bimodal. Delivery, Equipment Servicing and Autonomy have coefficients of variation of 0.67–1.15; Science has never recorded a zero and its coefficient is 0.14–0.26.
  • One zero is worth about 11 places and 85 points. Mean total falls from 297.9 with no zero to 212.8 with one, and rank follows.
  • Zeros cluster. An Equipment Servicing zero multiplies the chance of a Delivery zero by 2.9 and of an Autonomy zero by 2.1, the signature of one broken rover losing several missions.
  • Autonomy is the persistent sink. About 610 of the roughly 945 mission points the field leaves to zeros each year are Autonomy points, and the rate has not improved in five years.

Zero rates by mission and year

Counts of teams scoring exactly zero, with the share of that year’s finals field in brackets.

Year Finalists Science Delivery Equipment Autonomy
2022 26 0 8 (31 %) 6 (23 %) 12 (46 %)
2023 31 0 2 (6 %) 7 (23 %) 15 (48 %)
2024 34 0 2 (6 %) 5 (15 %) 17 (50 %)
2025 35 0 1 (3 %) 4 (11 %) 7 (20 %)
2026 36 0 12 (33 %) 5 (14 %) 16 (44 %)
Pooled 162 0 25 (15.4 %) 27 (16.7 %) 67 (41.4 %)

S-URC22-SCORES S-URC23-SCORES S-URC24-SCORES S-URC25-SCORES S-URC26-SCORES

Exact-zero rate by mission, and points lost to zeros, 2022–2026
Panel (a) is the zero rate by mission and year; panel (b) estimates the points the field left to zeros each year, from 994 in 2022 to 1350 in 2026. The estimate prices each zero at the mean non-zero score of that mission in that year, so it is an upper bound. Sample: 162 finals team-years.Robotics Club @ Mississippi State University, 2026. Original analysis. S-URC22-SCORES S-URC26-SCORES Full resolution
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The interactive view plots the same rates on a 0–100 % scale. Science stays on the axis at zero, which is why the line is drawn at the bottom rather than omitted.

The cost of a zero

Missions scored exactly zero Team-years Mean final rank Mean total
0 83 10.2 297.9
1 50 21.1 212.8
2 18 29.2 158.4
3 11 28.0 152.2
Mean rank and mean total against the number of zero missions
Two panels: mean final rank and mean final total for team-years with 0, 1, 2 or 3 missions scored exactly zero. The first zero costs about 11 places and 85 points; the second costs another 8 places and 54 points. Sample: 162 finals team-years, 2022–2026.Robotics Club @ Mississippi State University, 2026. Original analysis. S-URC-RESULTS Full resolution

The isolated effect is the same for each mission: mean rank is 15.4 with a non-zero Delivery score against 25.1 with a zero, 14.6 against 28.6 for Equipment Servicing, and 11.7 against 24.3 for Autonomy. The Autonomy gap of 12.7 places is stable at 11.9 to 15.2 places in every year from 2022 to 2026 S-URC-RESULTS.

A zero is not one thing

The co-occurrence matrix is what separates a capability gap from an incident. A team that zeroes Equipment Servicing also zeroes Delivery 44 % of the time, 2.9 times the base rate, and Autonomy 85 % of the time, 2.1 times the base rate. A team that zeroes Delivery also zeroes Equipment Servicing 48 % of the time, again 2.9 times the base rate.

The Autonomy pattern is different. Of the 67 Autonomy zeros, 58 % are isolated: the rover scored in every other mission and simply could not complete the autonomous task. The other 42 % arrive with another zero and point to a rover-level failure. Equipment Servicing is the reverse: only 11 % of its zeros are isolated, so an Equipment zero usually signals a fault that took other missions down with it S-URC-RESULTS.

Points forgone

Mission Mean score when non-zero Zeros a year Points left to zeros a year
Delivery 27.9 5.0 140
Equipment Servicing 36.3 5.4 196
Autonomy 45.5 13.4 610
Total ≈945

The yearly totals are 994, 1120, 1051, 450 and 1350 for 2022 to 2026 S-URC-RESULTS. Delivery is the volatile row: one zero in 2025 and twelve in 2026. Autonomy is the persistent one, and it is the largest single loss in the field.

Consistency means a floor, not a flat line

The word consistency needs care here. Team totals swing for good teams because the ceiling moves with the field: the top five’s year-to-year standard deviation is 52.3 against 26.4 for the bottom ten, and the correlation between a team’s mean total and its year-to-year spread is +0.56 across the 28 teams with at least three appearances S-URC-RESULTS. What is consistent about the elite is the absence of zeros, not the absence of variance. That comparison is worked in full on Top versus rest.

The values on this page

Statistic Value Definition Period Sample Source Chart and chapter
Autonomy zero rate 41.4 % Share of finals entries scoring exactly zero 2022–2026 162 team-years S-URC-RESULTS Chart above; Top versus rest
Delivery zero rate 15.4 % Same, Delivery mission 2022–2026 162 team-years S-URC-RESULTS Analysis of failures
Equipment zero rate 16.7 % Same, Equipment Servicing 2022–2026 162 team-years S-URC-RESULTS Analysis of failures
Science zero rate 0 % Same, Science mission 2022–2026 162 team-years S-URC-RESULTS Scores and results
Rank with no zero 10.2 Mean final rank, 83 team-years 2022–2026 83 team-years S-URC-RESULTS Top versus rest
Cost of one zero 11 places, 85 points Change from zero zeros to one 2022–2026 133 team-years S-URC-RESULTS Top versus rest
Points left to zeros ≈945 a year Zeros times the non-zero mean 2022–2026 162 team-years S-URC-RESULTS Analysis of failures

Evidence note

The sheets record a final score, not an attempt: a zero can mean a failed attempt, an abandoned mission or a withdrawal, and the official data do not distinguish them. Zero rates and co-occurrence are therefore robust, while any claim about the cause of a specific zero is inference. The points-forgone figure prices every zero at the mean of the non-zero entries in the same mission and year, so it is an upper bound on what those teams would have scored.

Sources for this page

  1. S-URC22-SCORESURC2022 Official ScoresURC, 2022-06.Original
  2. S-URC23-SCORESURC2023 Official ScoresURC, 2023-06.Original
  3. S-URC24-SCORESURC2024 Official ScoresURC, 2024-06.Original
  4. S-URC25-SCORESURC2025 Official ScoresURC, 2025-06.Original
  5. S-URC26-SCORESURC2026 Official ScoresURC, 2026-05/06.Original Archived copy
  6. S-URC-RESULTSURC official scores 2022–2026, compiled CSVThe Mars Society / URC, 2022–2026.Print copy