For the third straight year, a team of students from West Virginia University will be participating in an engineering design competition that challenges students to think about the conditions astronauts will face as they venture beyond Earth.
The 2015 Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts Academic Linkage or RASC-AL forum, sponsored by NASA and National Institute of Aerospace, will be held in Cocoa Beach, Florida, June 14-17. The team from WVU will join 15 other teams to present their research, including a technical paper and poster, to a panel of NASA and industry experts. Alfred Lynam, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, advises the team, which includes students from a number of engineering departments, as well as physics and geology, biology and psychology.
Lynam, who has an extensive background in astronautical engineering, saw advising the team as an opportunity to encourage students to learn more about space.
“Since the aerospace engineering degree at WVU is heavily focused on aircraft rather than spacecraft, I wanted to do whatever I could to encourage students to learn more about space,” Lynam said. “Advising the WVU RASC-AL team was a tangible way that I could support WVU students as they learn more about space exploration.”
Since the fall semester, the team has been working to design a self-sufficient manned research station on the Moon. The proposal includes plans for early robotic reconnaissance and construction missions to, eventually, human habitation and research missions. At the competition, the team will give a PowerPoint presentation about their project and answer questions from judges. The top two winning teams will receive a travel stipend to attend the AIAA Space 2015 Conference at the end of summer in Pasadena, California, where they will present a condensed version of their RASC-AL concept to industry colleagues.
“In the 2020’s NASA will have a transportation system based on the SLS and Orion that can ferry crews to orbits beyond the moon,” says Pat Troutman, human exploration strategic analysis lead at NASA Langley Research Center. “This deep space proving ground will allow us to develop and demonstrate capabilities required for future Mars missions.”
The team from WVU will partner with the State University of New York at Fredonia in the competition. The partnership came about when one student, Elizabeth Mastro, a psychology major, transferred to SUNY from WVU.
“Elizabeth wanted to continue working with the WVU team this year, so we decided to add SUNY Fredonia as a second university,” Lynam said. “She will be working on the human factors part of the project while the WVU team, which is made up mostly of engineering students, will be working on all the more technical parts of the project.”
Joining Mastro on the team are seniors Caitlin Ahrens (Fairmont), Mouad Baaddi (Toano, Virginia), Aaron Dunkle (Ceredo), Sean Lantto (Manassas, Virginia), Jared Leggett (Point Pleasant ) and Eric Rogers (Morgantown); juniors Cassie Ueltschy (Pine Grove ) and Melanie Wieland (Carnegie, Pennsylvania); sophomores Alexis Blevins (Hermitage, Pennsylvania) and Ivy Kwan (Morgantown); and freshmen Jacob Schmidt (Charlotte, North Carolina), Nanda Siva (Vienna) and Esteban Varady (Miami, Florida). Graduate student Nathan Tehrani (Morgantown) is also participating. The team is sponsored by WVU’s Student Partnership for the Advancement of Cosmic Exploration.
-WVU-
mcd/02/09/15
CONTACT: Mary C. Dillon, Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources
304.293.4086, Mary.Dillon@mail.wvu.edu
Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.