SDSU joins MIT as theme winner at NASA contest

Lined up against some big-name competition, a young group of South Dakota State University engineering students won its category in a prestigious NASA student competition.

SDSU was one of three finalists selected to compete in the Lunar Sample Return Concept category. 

The students were tasked with developing a concept to extract and return to Earth lunar surface and subsurface samples. That was one of four categories in NASA’s Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) competition. A total of 14 teams were selected as finalists, with three of them coming from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which won the other three categories.

The award for best prototype was won by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which snapped a three-year streak of seeing SDSU get that award. In SDSU’s three previous trips to the RASC-AL finals, SDSU also won its category in 2023 and was second in its category and third overall in 2024. 

This year’s categories had a bit different focus. SDSU has built a strong reputation in building rovers. However, that was not an option in 2026. Todd Letcher, an associate professor in mechanical engineering and the students’ project adviser, complimented the young team in responding to the challenge.

Letcher said, “It was nice to have a new challenge that really stretched their understanding of design and what is needed on the moon.  The theme this year forced us to think beyond designing a rover and instead think about how to take advantage of other infrastructure available on the moon and incorporate that into our new technology that we designed.”

Young SDSU team not intimidated

Of course, this group of students that was competing June 2-4 at Cocoa Beach, Florida, not far from Kennedy Space Center, wasn’t a seasoned batch of design engineers. They were three sophomores and three freshmen. The other teams in their category were from the University of Michigan, which had all grad students, and Texas A&M, also a large, top-tier engineering school.

Why is SDSU able to compete so well against more prestigious, better-funded schools with more advanced students?

Letcher said, “That is a great question. I ask myself sometimes too. We have students who are very dedicated. They want to learn. They want to work hard. A lot of our students are excited about building new things. We try to find aspects of technology or lunar exploration that they are each individually excited about, and with a team of five or six people, we can assemble a team that covers everything that is needed.”

This year’s team included Bryson Love, of Charlestown, Indiana, and Channing Bloedel, of Rapid City. They are both sophomores and competed in the RASC-AL finals in 2025. Love was team lead this year while Bloedel was design lead.

Other team members were: Bennett Foster, sophomore, Sioux Falls, research lead; Rachel Ziegeldorf, Mitchell, operations lead; Alex Diersen, Brookings, drilling lead; and Rylie-Sky Stoll, Sioux Falls, environmental lead, all freshmen. All of them are mechanical engineering majors. Liam Murray, Omaha, Nebraska, was the graduate adviser.

Weekly accountability matures team

Letcher said the students don’t act their age, either in behavior or their presentation. While they are competing, in some cases, against students in their third or fourth year of a doctoral program, Letcher said the students have been preparing for their presentation the entire school year. 

“We meet once a week as a full group and everyone presents what they have learned that week.  They quickly overcome the uncomfortableness of speaking in front of a group, and they become good at finding solutions. I don’t give them a lot of assigned reading. I ask them questions and have them find the answers,” Letcher said.

There are plenty of questions to answer when teams are tasked with designing a mission and the hardware to accomplish lunar sample returns in a variety of conditions, including figuring out how to keep samples at lunar conditions until they get back to a lab on earth to be tested. 

The SDSU team designed SELENE (Sample Extraction of Lunar Elements for Network Entry), which would be capable of drilling about 60 inches (1.5 meters) into the moon’s surface. The soil would be captured within a tube that includes the drill bit. The sample would be furthered sealed at a lunar base and returned to Earth for further examination.

The drill would include six drill bits and tubes. The drill could operate autonomously at preselected sites and would be attached to an autonomous rover.

To date, an American rover has not successfully performed drilling missions below the moon’s surface.

Mechanical engineers see project differently

The team’s goals called for SELENE to return to Earth 100 kilograms of unconditioned samples, 25 kilograms of refrigerated samples and 24 kilograms of frozen samples. Equipment must be able to operate in temperatures ranging from -333 to 130 degrees F (-203 to 54 C).

While NASA doesn’t provide a scoring rubric that delineates teams’ placings, Letcher said, “The judges really liked that we think things through logically. We’re good mechanical designers. Most of the rest of the students there are aerospace majors. From start to finish, we think about things different than other groups do, always grounded in reality and what can actually be accomplished.”

“We also try to think innovatively - how do we make things extra stiff without adding mass? How do we cut mass without sacrificing strength? And, eventually, how do you actually manufacture that design?  It all has to work and be realistic. We build that thinking and logic into the entire mission concept.”

Love said, “I think what separated us from the University of Michigan and Texas A&M was I felt that our project was more thorough and planned out. I felt like we addressed the main theme requirements better than both schools. Texas A&M focused more on research rather than actual design after the research phase. 

“For the University of Michigan, I think the issue that the judges did not like about their project was that it was a 20-yearlong sample return mission, which is not quite feasible according to the judges. 

“Additionally, we had a pretty cool prototype, whereas the other schools did not really have anything that moved or functioned.”

Prototype impresses judges

While SDSU’s prototype didn’t work at the conclusion of the team’s 25-minute presentation, the team did have slides showing it at work, and the prototype worked the following day at a poster presentation, when the judges “really enjoyed watching the core drill work and collect samples using sand,” Love said.

Letcher added, “Building a product that will work, not just coming up with an idea” helps set SDSU apart. “Ours was a very practical prototype.”

In addition to the contest, the finalists visited Kennedy Space Center, and the SDSU team toured Space Resources Technologies, which makes simulated lunar dust.