Project Altair (Islamic University of Technology)

Project Altair reached its first URC finals in 2025 and finished 18^th of 35 with points in all four missions, including 42 in Autonomy. The team was formed in 2023 by merging two Islamic University of Technology rover teams that date to 2015, and it registered 70 members for its first season. It then qualified for the 2026 finals, was named by the national press as one of 38 invited teams, and recorded only a review score. What it shows is how much a first finals can deliver, and how little of that survives when a season ends at or before the field.

Identity and results

Project Altair represents the Islamic University of Technology in Gazipur, Bangladesh. It was founded in 2023 by merging two earlier IUT rover teams, Anirban and Avijatrik, which date to 2015 S-ALTAIR-ERC25. The merged team entered the URC finals for the first time in 2025 and returned a qualified entry in 2026 S-URC25-SCORES S-URC26-SCORES. Tier C is the census label for a single scored finals; the tier rule is defined on the census page.

The rover is named Musafir 2.0 in the 2025 European Rover Challenge registration, which also lists 70 members S-ALTAIR-ERC25.

The total is the exact sum of its five components. For scale, fifth place in the same finals scored 351.25 and ITU in 22^nd scored 234.73 S-URC25-SCORES.

The 2026 entry recorded a review score of 87.88 and no mission scores S-URC26-SCORES. The qualification is independently confirmed. The Daily Star reported on 2026-03-29 that five Bangladeshi teams secured finals places after the review, naming Project Altair, and that 116 teams from 18 countries entered with only 38 teams from 11 countries invited S-ALTAIR-DAILYSTAR.

The rover, as far as the record goes

No design report, subsystem page or confirmed public code archive exists, and the team’s URC-listed site returns no response S-ALTAIR-SITE-DEAD. The GitHub organisation that shares the team’s name holds flight-control and simulation projects with no documented link to the rover, so it is not attributed here.

What can be read is the score profile. A rover scoring 71 in Science, 30 in Delivery, 25 in Equipment Servicing and 42 in Autonomy in the same finals had four working mission chains, including a manipulator and an autonomy stack. That is an inference from the score sheet, not a description of hardware, and it is the only evidence available.

Two of those numbers are worth comparing with the front of the same field. The fifth-place team scored 71 in Delivery and 22.4 in Autonomy S-URC25-SCORES, so Altair’s Delivery at 30 was less than half the front-runner’s while its Autonomy at 42 was nearly double. A debut can be strong in one mission family and ordinary in another, and the summary score hides that. In the 2025 autonomy mission, waypoint traversal with visual target identification, a 42 implies partial completion rather than a full demonstration.

Mission performance

2023, the merger year. No URC entry; the European Rover Challenge profile gives 2023 as the founding year S-ALTAIR-ERC25.

2025, 18^th of 35. Science 71, Delivery 30, Equipment Servicing 25 and Autonomy 42, on a review score of 89.76 S-URC25-SCORES. A mid-field debut with points in every mission.

2026, qualified but unscored. A review score of 87.88 and no mission rows, after a confirmed invitation S-URC26-SCORES S-ALTAIR-DAILYSTAR. The score-sheet structure cannot distinguish a withdrawal, a travel failure or a failure to record a mission score, and no source states which happened.

Lessons for a first build

• Consolidating two teams is a real option. Two IUT teams dating to 2015 merged in 2023, registered 70 members for 2025, and placed 18^th at the first finals. In a field where several universities run competing clubs, this is the only documented consolidation, and it worked.
• Four mid-field missions beat one strong mission. Altair’s 71, 30, 25 and 42 produced 257.76 and 18^th place. A team with one excellent mission and three zeros finishes far lower on a similar engineering effort.
• A first-year autonomy score can be substantial. 42 out of 100 on debut shows that partial waypoint traversal is reachable without a mature stack, and it is worth planning for in the first season rather than the third.
• Keep the site alive. A dead domain erases the public record of an 18^th-place finish, and a static page is cheaper to maintain than a content system.
• Separate “invited” from “scored”. 2026 is a qualified season with no mission result. A team reading its own history should record the two facts separately, because they mean different things.

What remains uncertain

Why there are no 2026 mission rows after a confirmed invitation is unknown. Every mechanical and electrical detail is missing: mass, dimensions, wheel and suspension type, arm degrees of freedom, end effector, science instruments, radio and on-board computer. Whether Musafir 2.0 is the 2025 URC rover or only the European Rover Challenge entry is not stated. Whether the website is permanently down or was temporarily unreachable is unknown; the check made one attempt on 2026-10-25. The technical inheritance from Anirban and Avijatrik is undocumented.

Team sources

• ERC 2025 team profile, the rover name, the 70-member team and the founding history.
• The Daily Star, “Five Bangladeshi universities make it to URC 2026 Finals”, the 2026 qualification and the size of the invited field.
• altairrover.com, the team site listed by URC, which returned no response at the time of the check.
• University Rover Challenge, the competition whose official score sheets carry the results above.