They\u2019re spending the rest of this semester, the summer, and into the fall designing and building their prototype for a lunar rover, then testing its ability to navigate extreme terrain and harsh conditions similar to the moon\u2019s south pole. Their work is being supported by $150,000 in project funding from NASA.<\/p>\n
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A chemical engineering and material sciences and engineering major, Theresa Nosel \u201922 (ENG) is the UConn team\u2019s leader. Nosel, who has completed multiple internships at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Ohio and the NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, approached her senior year looking for a way to share her NASA experience with other UConn students.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was encouraged by one of my friends to apply for my first program, and it took a lot of encouragement, because you think of NASA as the most brilliant minds, and I was like, \u2018That’s not something I could do,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then I applied for my first thing, and it just snowballed into more and more and more and more programs with them. And I just wanted to open it up to new people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nosel learned about the annual Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-Changing, or BIG, Idea Challenge during her first NASA internship in 2019. Now in its seventh year, this university-level competition invites students to tackle some of the most critical needs facing space exploration. Students propose, design, develop, and demonstrate their technology in a project-based program over the course of a year and a half.<\/p>\n
The challenge invites teams to initially create and submit concepts and proposals at the end of September. Teams have several months to generate ideas and plans before submitting a formal written proposal and a short video in mid-January.<\/p>\n
For the 2022 challenge, participants were asked to develop new modalities for rovers to use in navigating the more challenging terrains on the moon, and potentially beyond.<\/p>\n
\u201cTraditional wheeled rovers cannot reach many of the unexplored areas of the moon and Mars,\u201d organizers wrote in announcing the challenge last fall. \u201cStudent teams\u2026.will develop innovative and cost-effective robots that go beyond wheeled rovers capable of exploring other worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n
The challenge is aligned with NASA\u2019s Artemis program goals of using innovative technologies to explore the moon\u2019s surface, and then to use what is learned in that exploration to help guide manned missions to Mars.<\/p>\n
This year, seven finalists were selected and given funding to fully develop and build out their technologies. This is the first team from UConn to ever compete in the BIG Idea Challenge, let alone the first to be funded.<\/p>\n
The challenge\u2019s brief and the prospect of designing and constructing a lunar rover was exciting for Nosel, who began building her team by presenting to a few classes and advertising an informational session in the Daily Digest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Daily Digest is where I got the most response,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople just started emailing me. People came to the little info session that I had, and we formed a team. And then just more and more people started joining.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just saw it, and I emailed instantly,\u201d says Hritish Bhargava \u201923 (ENG), an engineering physics major and a member of the first Stamford Startup Studio cohort<\/a>. Bhargava was one of the few who knew about the BIG Idea Challenge before seeing Nosel\u2019s Daily Digest post.<\/p>\n Other students weren\u2019t familiar with the challenge, but were intrigued by the idea of working on a NASA project.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was our second week, and we were just literally diving into the Daily Digest, clicking on every single link,\u201d says first-year student Kalin Kochnev \u201925 (ENG), a computer science and engineering major. \u201cIt was sort of lucky for me \u2013 like right place, right time \u2013 and I’m really happy to have joined. It’s been super awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n