The Australian HPV student race series is well known and admired among recumbent fans, but there is also another student race. Way different, basically off-road. We can almost call it off-Earth. Currently called Human Exploration Rover Challenge, but formerly known as Great Moonbuggy Race, has been organized at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama since 1994. It is one of six Artemis Student Challenges that NASA hosts to engage, inspire and help develop the next generation into science, technology engineering, and math. See the following videos to learn more about the annual race.
The enjoyable fact for recumbent enthusiasts is that most of the buggies are recumbent quads or sometimes trikes with many unique approaches to the design. From watching the buggies racing you can see that the suspension is important as well as the larger size of the wheels. Also, the back-to-back position of riders seems to be better. Often, some recumbent bike know-how would be useful. Anyway, enjoy the Sunday series of videos.
If you want to know more about the race, visit the general web page here.
More details about the design of the buggy can be found here.
Tons of photos from the 2019 race in the Flick gallery here.
And here is some 11 years old report from the Great Moonbuggy Race...
…and finally some monstrous jumps and even crashes plus also a demonstration of enormous effort in getting the vehicles into the finish.
