VANCOUVER, B.C. - They've put in more than 3,000 hours to have a shot at half-a-million dollars in prize money and prestige awarded by NASA. Not to mention the claim they're working to save humanity.

But all those prospects are far from the minds of these University of British Columbia students - about as far away as the celestial body they're aiming to conquer.

The Thunderbird Robotics club has been working tirelessly to build a moon dust-shovelling robot, which they'll set in motion at a NASA-run competition in California next week.

"I think about the big picture, but definitely the biggest driver for me is solving the problem they presented to us and the challenge," said Taylor Cooper, 25, an engineering and physics student.

Some 20 teams will be competing in the NASA Regolith Excavator Centennial Challenge Oct. 17, aiming to prove their robot is most agile in excavating moon rock. Along with $500,000 in potential prize money, a winning team will have the opportunity to contribute to the American space agency's future missions.

NASA has pledged to build a permanent base on the moon around 2020. It's construction work that would require digging tools able to scrape away layers of fine lunar dust in a low gravity environment to reveal concrete ground.

The UBC students heard that call and have spent the past three years preparing their gadget - a lumbering white box stuffed with colourful wires set on thick threads - named the Miskin SR-1 Moon Scraper.

During the competition, they'll control it remotely as they attempt to shovel a minimum of 150 kg of moon dust - called regolith - in 30 minutes and dump it into a box.

For humans colonizing the moon and astronauts aiming to use the base as a launch pad for more extreme missions to Mars, a tool that collects the dust is also crucial because it can be mined for the materials that make water.

Hoping to learn whether H2O is indeed lurking beneath the moon's surface, NASA crashed a rocket and lunar probe into its surface on Friday, though scientists are still analyzing the data and haven't yet answered that question.

Testing their robot in a giant sandbox on Saturday, Cooper and his teammates were deeply focused on making modifications to improve its performance in the final days before its public display. Taking a time out from the tinkering for a moment, he reflected on ongoing human destruction of the Earth.

"I'm on board with sustainability and this is like sustainability times 1000. Because at some point you're going to have to move away from earth," he said.

"Space exploration is the only place we have to go - it's the next frontier. It's pretty far out there though, the stuff we're doing now is ... a bit of a drop in the pan."

That's when team mentor John Meech stepped in to note the impact that could eventually be made by the students' work was tough to grasp because it's still in the early stages.

"What he's really saying is we're pioneers," said the UBC professor of mining engineering.

People traversed North America in stage coaches before zooming around in cars five times the speed, he said.

"We couldn't imagine 150 years ago we'd be driving cars and have paved roads and stuff. So (Cooper's) saying this could be mundane with respect to looking forward," he said, but eventually it'll be recognized as an important building block for a much more fantastic product.

Asked whether in 50 years the students would, then, look back at their work with pride, they perked up.

"Absolutely. Definitely."