Carleton Planetary Robotics Team (CPRT)

Carleton is a science-first team with a specific published payload: a custom 785 nm Raman spectrometer built to detect carotenoids in Mars-analogue soil and field-tested at the Mars Desert Research Station. Across four finals the Science mission has never fallen below 77, and Delivery has never exceeded 28. The team is worth reading for how it chose a narrow biosignature target, and for what a decade of institutional history does and does not guarantee about continuity of entry.

Identity and results

The Carleton Planetary Robotics Team is based at Carleton University in Ottawa and splits its work across five subteams: mechanical, electrical, science, software, and business and administration S-CPRT-SITE. It competes at both the Canadian International Rover Challenge and the URC S-CPRT-SITE. The finals record spans 2018, 2019, 2025 and 2026, with registered but unscored seasons in 2022 and 2024 and no registration in 2023 S-URC22-TEAMS S-URC24-TEAMS S-URC23-TEAMS. Tier C is the census label for the two scored finals inside the 2022–2026 window; the tier rule is defined on the census page.

No rover name or generation history is published. The team’s rover section is image-only S-CPRT-SITE.

The 2018 and 2019 rows come from the archived official tables; the 2025 and 2026 rows come from the current score sheets S-URC-HISTRESULTS S-URC25-SCORES S-URC26-SCORES.

The rover and the science payload

The rover. Mass, wheel count, suspension type, arm degrees of freedom, battery, radio and on-board computer are all unpublished. What the team does state is the subteam scope: mechanical owns chassis, suspension and arm; electrical owns power, wiring and sensors; science analyses soil; software owns autonomy, vision and control S-CPRT-SITE. No design report and no public code archive were found.

The science payload. A sponsor case study published by the spectrometer supplier StellarNet describes the instrument in the team’s own words, so the claims below are reported rather than independently measured S-CPRT-STELLARNET:

• A custom Raman spectrometer intended to ride on the rover and search for signs of life.
• 785 nm laser excitation, chosen to target the high-energy carbon–carbon and carbon–hydrogen bonds, with a CCD detector and SpectraWizard acquisition software.
• A target analyte of carotenoids, organic molecules that occur only through biological processes, which makes the payload a biosignature detector rather than a mineralogy instrument.
• Spectra said to correspond to carbon–carbon and carbon–hydrogen bond vibrations from Mars-like soil, with field validation at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.
• The instrument is shown being lowered onto the rover, which implies a deployment mechanism rather than a fixed sensor.

The case study credits Milan Djordjevic, Emily Causi, Willow Cartwright and Jade Rempel-Facey by name S-CPRT-STELLARNET. It remains a supplier document, not a team report, which is the main limit on its evidence value.

Mission performance

2018, 24^th of 36. A perfect Science score of 100 with Delivery at 15, Equipment at 1.9 and Autonomy at 0 S-URC-HISTRESULTS. A team that could do the science mission perfectly and nothing else.

2019, 17^th of 36. The best finish in the team’s record: Science 77, Equipment 43.7, Delivery 10, Autonomy 10 S-URC-HISTRESULTS. All four mission families worked at once.

2025, 23^rd of 35. The first season in the window with all four missions scored: Science 79, Delivery 28, Equipment 12.8, Autonomy 25.2 S-URC25-SCORES. A complete set of mid-field scores is a mid-field result.

2026, 21^st of 36. Science 87, Equipment 33.68, Delivery 8, Autonomy 0, and a review score of 79.38 S-URC26-SCORES. Science and servicing improved while the two missions that need a rehearsed sequence collapsed, and the rank improved because the field moved further.

The pattern across four finals is consistent: Science 100, 77, 79 and 87 against Delivery 15, 10, 28 and 8 and Autonomy 0, 10, 25.2 and 0. The payload is the stable part of the rover.

Lessons for a first build

• Pick one biosignature and design the instrument around it. Targeting carotenoids at 785 nm is a hypothesis with a measurable answer, and it is cheaper to defend in a review than a general-purpose spectrometer with no analyte.
• Score the analysis chain, not the sensor. Collecting, preparing, measuring and interpreting is what the science mission rewards; the team’s stated differentiator was integrating sample collection with real-time spectroscopy, not the spectrometer alone.
• A complete mission set is a floor, not a result. 2025 had all four missions scoring and still finished 23^rd. Balanced mid-field work does not move a team up; one mission family has to be strong.
• Plan the second season while the first is running. Two registered seasons produced no score row and one season was not registered at all, after a decade of near-continuous review submissions S-CPRT-YT. Institutional history does not guarantee continuity of entry.
• Publish a two-page payload note. The best engineering evidence for this team was written by its spectrometer supplier, not by the team S-CPRT-STELLARNET. Two pages of the team’s own method would be more useful and more durable.

What remains uncertain

The rover’s name and generation history are not published. Mass, dimensions, wheel and suspension type, arm degrees of freedom, end effector, battery, radios and on-board computer are all unknown. Why the 2022 and 2024 seasons ended before the score sheet, and why 2023 was skipped, is not stated. Why Autonomy fell from 25.2 to 0 between 2025 and 2026 while Science rose from 79 to 87 has no public explanation. Whether the Raman instrument flown in 2026 is the same one the 2025 case study describes is also unknown.

Team sources

• curover.ca, the team site, with the five subteams, the competitions and the image-only rover section.
• carleton.ca/cprt, the university-hosted copy of the same content.
• CPRT on YouTube, the System Acceptance Review films from 2017 to 2026.
• University Rover Challenge, the competition whose official score sheets carry the results above.