Led by petroleum engineering student Mohamed Khaled, an interdisciplinary team of graduate and undergraduate students in the College of Engineering competed in the 2020-21 NASA Moon to Mars Ice and Prospecting Challenge.
Together, the students designed and built a next-generation drilling and ice-harvesting prototype rig for space sporting several impressive features. Their rigging, a strong but lightweight structure made of rods, cables and rotary motors, can deploy or fold itself. The drill bit self-adjusts its progress through various subsurface materials using their advanced computer-automated system. Their drilling, heating and extraction systems work individually or together as needed to collect water frozen within the soil of other worlds. Finally, everything they created operates in the airless environment of space without any need for direct human assistance.