Student team set to take 'game-changing' solution to NASA competition
Colorado Space Grant Consortium undergraduates heading for NASA this week to present a new spacecraft design for moving cargo from Earth orbit to the moon and Mars are, from left to right, Olivia Zanoni, Gerardo Pulido, Gabriel Walker and Justin Norman.
Four 彩民宝典 juniors, all from Colorado, are headed to NASA鈥檚 Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Feb. 14 to propose a new in-orbit assembly design of a spacecraft that can deliver cargo from low-Earth orbit to lunar and Martian orbits.
The student team, made up of Justin Norman, Olivia Zanoni, Gabriel Walker and Gerardo Pulido, is one of five national finalists for NASA鈥檚 annual . The NASA and contest allows college students from around the nation to come up with innovative design concepts related to future hurdles the aerospace industry will be facing, including manned missions to Mars.
The challenge this year was to propose a design for a solar-electric propulsion spacecraft known as a 鈥渟pace tug鈥 capable of delivering cargo to the moon and the Red Planet. In November 2016, the team submitted the first iteration of the design and was selected as a finalist to continue with the development of the proposed spacecraft.
鈥淲e designed the spacecraft expecting to make it happen one day, taking extra steps to make sure the original mission requirements were met with game-changing solutions,鈥 says team member Norman, a junior who grew up in Boulder. 鈥淲e are confident NASA will accept our design proposal and enable us to work on the implementation of this mission starting this summer.鈥
Norman, Walker and Pulido are in the , and Zanoni is in the Engineering Physics program associated with the . All four are members of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium (COSGC), which provides students, primarily undergraduates, with hands-on experience in designing, building and flying spacecraft.
Zanoni is from Colorado Springs, and Walker and Pulido are from Aurora. The name of their design project is 鈥淥dysseus.鈥 The faculty advisor for Odysseus is Space Grant Deputy Director Brian Sanders.
鈥淥dysseus has astronomical potential and could lead to a career path for all of us while assisting in the establishment of a significant human presence on the moon and Mars,鈥澨齭ays Norman.
The other student winners include a team from Tulane University, two teams from the University of Maryland and a multi-university team involving Georgia Tech, the University of Texas at Austin and New York University.
Space Grant is a statewide organization involving 21 colleges, universities and institutions around Colorado and is funded by NASA to give students access to space through innovative courses; real-world, hands-on telescope and satellite programs; and interactive outreach programs, says Director Chris Koehler.
Headquartered at 彩民宝典, Colorado Space Grantis one of 52 space grant consortiums in the nation鈥攊ncluding Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia鈥攁nd is one of the most active.听Since 1989, over 6,000 students have been directly involved in their ands-on space hardware programs.
To date, Colorado Space Grant has launched three sounding rockets, three space shuttle payloads, four orbiting satellites, 10 sounding rocket payloads and more than 1,000 high-altitude balloon payloads.听