{"id":146953,"date":"2025-05-29T09:00:22","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T13:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=146953"},"modified":"2025-10-17T16:03:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T20:03:58","slug":"ucf-engineering-students-place-3rd-in-nasa-tech-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/ucf-engineering-students-place-3rd-in-nasa-tech-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"UCF Engineering Students Place 3rd in NASA Tech Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of UCF Knights took home two awards from the NASA MINDS challenge, a collegiate-level competition that encourages students to create new technologies that could benefit future space missions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The UCF team, known as the Lunar Regolith Obliterators, won third place in the Championship Build, Design and Demonstration category and also finished third in the Systems Engineering Paper category. The monetary prize for both awards totals $1,500.<\/p>\n

The Lunar Regolith Obliterators comprises six mechanical<\/a> and aerospace engineering<\/a> students: Guillermo Villalobos, Colin Doyle, Tati Gary, Oscar Rodriguez Medina, Ivette Williams and team leader Robert Trautwein. Their goal was to mitigate the harmful effects of lunar regolith<\/a>, or moon dirt, on solar panels located at space stations or on spacecraft.<\/p>\n

Lunar regolith can negatively impact space missions by clinging to the surface of solar panels, blocking sunlight or causing damage through its abrasive texture. If left on the solar panels for too long, the regolith can also lead to overheating.<\/p>\n

To solve these problems, the team developed a vibrational system and a dust shield system that work together to eliminate lunar dust from a solar panel.<\/p>\n

What ended up as an award-winning creation began as a Senior Design<\/em> project for the students\u2019 capstone course. While the timing of both events led to back-to-back presentations less than a week apart, the team couldn\u2019t resist the opportunity to participate in a NASA challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe liked the idea of being able to provide a possible solution, with certain limitations of course, to those challenges that NASA faces in actual lunar missions,\u201d Villalobos says. \u201cThe preparation for both presentations was a bit hectic, but it taught us how to properly collaborate for a positive outcome and manage our time wisely.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team was guided by Senior Lecturer and IDesign Director Kurt Stresau, and Senior Lecturer Marino Nader, who provided both professional advice and insights from the industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey provided valuable feedback as well as challenged our ideas for the improvement of the project,\u201d Villalobos says. \u201cTheir insight into real world engineering applications provided us with reasonable and feasible solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The guidance from the faculty coupled with the experience of the NASA competition allowed students to learn lessons that they couldn\u2019t have gained in the classroom alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe learned that teamwork makes the dream work,\u201d Villalobos says. \u201cWithout the collaboration of the entire team, this project would not have been a success.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The team of mechanical and aerospace engineering students turned their Senior Design<\/em> project into an award-winning invention that can protect solar panels in space from the harmful effects of lunar regolith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":146954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[5,24,27],"tags":[973,4361,18102],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-146953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colleges","category-science-technology","category-student-life","tag-college-of-engineering-and-computer-science","tag-space","tag-student-success"],"yoast_head":"\nUCF Engineering Students Place 3rd in NASA Tech Challenge | University of Central Florida News<\/title>\n<meta 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