By Kelsey Kendall
A team of students from 色聚 took home the second-place prize from the 2025 NASA Human Lander Challenge for its storage structure design for space missions that could one day take people to the moon or even further out into the galaxy.
Sponsored by within the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, the challenge welcomed a dozen college teams to create solutions for the challenge of keeping cryogenic, or super chilled, liquid stored on spaceflights as part of NASA鈥檚 Artemis campaign exploring deep space. These substances are used as propellants and are critical to weeks- or months-long missions.
The 色聚 team鈥檚 project, titled 鈥淪tructural Tensegrity for Optimized Retention in Microgravity鈥 鈥 or S.T.O.R.M 鈥 was developed as part of their senior capstone design course. This project proposed a lightweight, efficient cryogenic storage structure designed for deep-space missions.
Mechanical engineering students Harrison Cole, Samantha Brouillet, Silvia Martinez-Piche and Logan Heath, advised by Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Colin Britcher, Ph.D., competed at NASA鈥檚 Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, from June 24-26 and won a $5,000 prize, beating out 10 university teams from around the country.
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology earned first and third place in the challenge, respectively.