A short history
Olympus Robotics' story began in a text message asking "what if?"
Like many stories, the story of Olympus Robotics began with a small action: the team started as a text message in a friends’ group chat from Charles, on New Year’s Eve in 2025, saying:
“HEY, WE SHOULD START A URC TEAM! FOR 2027!” (I’m preserving the all-caps for historical accuracy)
This one text message prompted quick and excited responses from future team leads such as Joaquín, Regina, Sofía and myself. This was a particularly exciting prospect for Joaquín and Regina, who were about to move to Monterrey from their home city of Toluca. During early January of 2026, we were all scattered across Mexico in our home cities for the winter break as the Tec’s spring semester kicks off in early February, so in-person work opportunities were limited. To not let the remaining weeks of the break unused, each of the initial team members started to envision how they could contribute to the mission from their areas of expertise. We quickly consolidated ourselves as the leads of our respective divisions of the team: Joaquín in systems integration, Regina in mechanics, Sofía in science, and so on. The group chat kept growing, and with it, the diversity and capability of the team.
February came round, and the first half of the 2026 academic year was mostly defined by putting together all the boring bits behind our rover, recruiting even more people and filing paperwork within the Tec de Monterrey to become an official student organization, secure a workspace, apply for scientific grants, among many other things. The engineering teams put together a massive “wish list” of parts and equipment, carefully making their choices to stay within URC’s regulations.
But why URC?
URC is short for University Rover Challenge: it’s a competition for university teams to build prototype Mars rovers, which compete in a series of challenges simulating tasks a rover would complete in a real-world Mars mission. It’s hosted annually by the Mars Society in the Utah desert: at a site used by the Society to conduct analog missions and research. Its location can best be described as the middle of nowhere. That isolation however, makes it absolutely stunning.
Yes, the team began as a text message, but what really set the project in motion was a shared desire within the initial crew: the desire to build something bigger than themselves (as well as a common fascination with space travel, of course). The group chat conversation on New Year’s Eve did little more than dig up that desire and put it front and center.
Where does that leave us now, seven months in? It leaves us with a foundation to start building on: a crew of immensely talented students looking to show the world (and Mars!) what they’re made of, a network of advisors and contacts within our university to lean on and guide us on our way, a plan, and a dream. What’s next is grabbing our tools and getting to work.