Senior Spacecraft Mission Design Project Showcase

Students work in teams to apply engineering design methodology, analytical thinking and creative problem solving to design a solution to a wide variety of space related challenges. This undergraduate research experience is intended to convey the Systems Engineering approach to solving complex problems in teams over the course of two semesters. See below for a list of the 11 teams of seniors in UT Aerospace and a brief description of their projects.

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Glacies Nova: The Space Cowboys

Ali Attarwala, Alex Chiu, Kelly Heilman, Katie Layton, Sam Luttrull, Kalman Mahlich, Michael Martinets, Kristen Pallesen, Streetja Pampati

The Glacies Nova team was tasked with designing a Mars sample return mission to compete in the AIAA Undergraduate Space Design Contest. The requirements are described in a Request for Proposal (RFP) on the AIAA website and include returning 2.5 kgs (5.5 lbs) of sample material from the surface of Mars to the surface of the Earth. The sample material must include water ice and must remain frozen throughout the entire journey.

Texas Microgreens: TMAPP (Texas Microgreens Automated Planter and Processor)

Gilberto Briscoe-Martinez, Anthony Doe, Eli Granoff, Johan Gonzalez, Viennie Lee, Antonio Macias, Ethan Marcom, Keagan Ngo, Sierra Obermoeller-Gilmer, Axel Streit

The TX Microgreens team is competing in the Deep Space Food Challenge, a NASA sponsored competition in which teams design a food growing, handling, and preparation payload for deep space travel. Teams must design the payload, per competition guidelines, and also analyze which crops would be best suited for the application. Their innovative design also includes a sealed composting unit for recycling unused organic matter to generate new growth medium.

The TEXAN Lander (The Topographic & Extreme Atmospheric Environment Lander)

Maxwell Carlile, Robert Keh, Austin Uresti

The TEXAN Lander team competed in the NASA Glenn Research Center University Student Design Challenge (USDC5) Space Challenge II: Long-Duration Venus Explorer. The challenge was to design a lander capable of surviving for 90 Earth days in the extremely hot and dense environment on the surface of Venus. The TEXAN Lander deploys a cluster of small gliders (LEAVES) during descent to take measurements of the atmosphere.

Project Victrix

Grace Calkins, Kaylee Champion, Zoelle Wong, Rujing Zha

The Victrix team designed a Venus lander solution to compete in the NASA Glenn Research Center (USDC5) Space Challenge II: Long-Duration Venus Explorer. This team's approach was to employ a parent lander and three child landers that can communicate with a Venus orbiter and with each other. Any one of them can survive for 90 days on the surface and satisfy the mission goals. One aspect of the design approach is to have some instrumentation designed to be short lived in order to gather data at the start of the mission with certain types of measuring equipment that can't realistically be designed to function at Venus's surface temperature of over 450 degrees C (842 degrees F) and atmospheric pressure that is over 90 times as great as Earth's.

CAMPER - The Crewed Artemis Mission Permanent Exploration Residence

Jordan Landel, Francis Lara, Aaron Light, Remington Linda, Greg Lowry, Gianluca Rizzo, Grant Spradley, Felipe Suarez

The CAMPER lunar habitat is a realistic take on what our first outpost on the Moon will look like and is an entry in the NASA sponsored RASC-AL student design competition. The habitat sits atop a single lander that is representative of current designs for lunar Human Landing Systems with very tight volume and mass constraints. A tiny home on the Moon, the CAMPER habitat is space efficient and strategically laid out to address a number of challenges including abrasive lunar dust and cabin pressurization and depressurization. This concept also focuses on satisfying an anticipated great demand for NASA outreach products and public engagement methods. A docking adapter allows for expansion and connection into a future network of assets near the lunar south pole.

Team MAVerick

Mandar Badithe, Junggeun Cho, Matthew Hawk, Benjamin Miller, Vishnu Selvakumar, Rhythem Sharma, Pranav Sridhar, Kadhir Umasankar

The MAVericks designed a low mass Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) to transport two humans from the surface of Mars to low Mars orbit. Competing in the NASA sponsored RASC-AL student design challenge, their approach leverages and enhances the life support systems on board their spacesuits so that the cabin of the MAV doesn't need to be pressurized. Mass savings is an emphasis here and utilizing the space suits to their fullest is this team's approach to accomplishing that goal.

Team Harmonia

Tedham Anderson, Landrey Bobo, Jennifer Byrd, Matthew Clark, William Fife, Morgan Miller, Andres Rojas, Wittiker Schlauch

The Harmonia habitat is designed for a deep space exploration mission that performs a Venus flyby. The system functions as a proving ground for Mars infrastructure and to take advantage of low latency communications with a probe that descends into the Venusian atmosphere. The probe is a flexible balloon that can compress and expand to raise and lower it's altitude via astronaut commands. Cameras relay images from high in the Venusian atmosphere so that astronauts on board can make decisions about which way to fly and instruments can collect data. This project is an entry for Theme 3 of the NASA sponsored RASC-AL student design challenge.

Project MACHO - Mission to Assess Ceres Habitability & Origin

Tirth Bhavsar, Vasara Iyer, Piero L Risi Mortola, Connor A. Rodriguez, James Scales, Ethan Shah, Joshua K. Wheeler

Project MACHO is a vision of the not so distant future; what if we could travel further than Mars and land on a dwarf planet? This mission would launch in 2049 and carry four crew members on a trip to investigate the dwarf planet Ceres. The gravity on the surface is roughly 3% that of Earth so landing would be less energy intensive than Mars but hopping around the surface in a spacesuit would be more of a challenge. The team analyzed the development of advanced propulsion methods that would allow for deep space exploration of an object that is about 80% further from the Sun than Mars. This team competed in the NASA sponsored RASC-AL design challenge and laid out plans for a system that could deliver humans to the surface of Ceres and return to Earth within roughly the same length of time as a Mars mission.

ReVERE - Regolith-Volatile Extraction and Return Expedition

Kiara Alvarez, Kaitlyn Arvesen, Brandon Clarke, Matthew Dean, Rob Fuentes, Jacob Greenly, Asha Jain

Competing in the RASC-AL student design challenge, the ReVERE team was tasked with designing a system architecture that can bring lunar samples from the surface of the Moon to docking at the International Space Station (ISS) for analysis. The mission leverages currently available technology wherever possible, and includes a thorough analysis of all the spacecraft segments that would make this concept achievable.

Commercial Vessel Protection Program: SOS (Satellite Overwatch System)

Aadesh Brahmbhatt, Jash Pujara, Simon Volovnik, James Easton, Naveen Ramachandran

At any given moment there are several piracy events taking place on our oceans; this link displays a live map. The SOS system is a low cost demonstration of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) equipment onboard a small satellite to attempt the identification of vessel movement via wake detection in near real-time. Proving the concept would encourage creation of a constellation of nano-SARs mounted in small satellites based on the standardized box shaped format of the CubeSat. Anti-piracy and protection against illegal fishing are among the many applications of a system that could quickly relay information about the transit of vessels in predetermined zones of global ocean traffic. This team designed a 12U CubeSat (about the size of a toaster oven) that would use analytic methods to detect and identify the size and direction of moving vessels via their wake signature (Kelvin wakes). They also designated the orbit parameters of a potential constellation of very small satellites that would focus on coverage of global piracy hotspots in a near continuous manner.

Lunar Payload Launch Platform (LPLP)

Drew Davis, Adam Hostak and James Roehm

The Lunar Payload Launch Platform is a design for equipment to be landed on the lunar surface that could launch small payloads of a few dozen grams (a couple ounces or less). These payloads could be delivered to other locations on the Moon, into orbit around the Moon, in orbit around the Earth or ejected from the Earth-Moon system entirely depending on the desired application. The LPLP design incorporates an electromagnetic acceleration mechanism and careful material selection to produce a launch system that could be delivered to the lunar surface in one landing. Potential applications for this system include deploying pico-satellites in constellations, creating networks of tiny seismometers that impact locations around the surface of the Moon, and delivering small amounts of lunar samples to other spacecraft.