First day at Mission Control

[ This article by Petra Dzurovcinova, was published on October 16 2011, last updated on April 2 2012. ]

The 2011 Veolia World Solar Challenge started today at 8:30am in Darwin. In total, 37 teams from 20 countries joined the friendly competition. The aim? To be the first ones to drive over 3000km through the Australian outback arriving in Adelaide.

RiAus is proud to be a host of Mission Control, allowing us, and you, to see the progress of the solar car teams live. While our start today wasn’t as smooth as it could have been due to technical difficulties, all seems to be working now! Tomorrow, you can join and watch the challenge with us.

Cars are on the road from 8:30am to 5:30pm every day. They need to pass set check-points by a certain time to be able to continue.

So what happened on the road today?

Dutch Solar Team Twente started the 2011 Veolia World Solar Challenge from the pole position. For the team, it it is best qualification result ever. The top 5 starting ranks after qualifications: 1) Solar Team Twente – 02.02.20 2) Nuon Solar Team – 02.02.50 3) Michigan – 02.03.01 4) Sunswift – 02.04.33 5) Tokai – 02.07.77.

The top 6 solar car teams today at 11am (Sunday 16 October) were Tokai University (Japan), Umicore Solar Team (Belgium), University of Michigan (USA), Nuon Solar Team (Netherlands),National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences with Apollo VI from Taiwan and Aurora from Australia. See all the registered teams.

Teams had to pass the first control checkpoint after 317km (in Katherine) by 3.30pm. At 1pm first two teams arrived in Katherine. Tokai Univesity and the University of Michigan, with only seconds separating them. They were followed by Nuon Solar team, only about a minute behind.

At the second check-point today in Dunmarra, Japanese Tokai Team arrived first, followed by dutch Nuon within the same minute, and Michigan within three minutes. They managed to arrive before 5pm. Any competitors coming in after 5pm will need to stay in Dunmarra, whereas the leaders will get up to 45 minutes down the road before the 5.30pm time limit.

But not everyone had such luck today. Indian team Solaris reported a technical failure today even before passing a starting line in Darwin, and had to be put on a trailer and driven to the next checkpoint.


Location	Time	Date Open	Date Closed
Control Checkpoints
Katherine	From 11am	Sunday 16	Sunday 16
Dunmarra	From 2pm	Sunday 16	Monday 17 at 3pm
Tennant Creek	From 8.30am	Monday 17	Tuesday 18 at 2pm
Barrow Creek	From 11.30am	Monday 17	Wednesday 19 at 10am
Alice Springs	From 2.30pm	Monday 17	Wednesday 19 at 3pm
Kulgera	From 8.30am	Tuesday 18	Thursday 20 at 9.30am
Coober Pedy	From 1pm	Tuesday 18	Thursday 20 at 3pm
Glendambo	From 4pm	Tuesday 18	Friday 21 at 2pm
Port Augusta	From 10am	Wednesday 19	Saturday 22 at 12 noon