Getting to the moon was the first part. Staying there permanently is NASA's next big goal, and innovative technologies developed by students from Michigan Tech's Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab are helping the agency achieve it.
The PSTDL, also called HuskyWorks, earned a place in the final round of two NASA competitions: the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge and the Watts on the Moon Challenge. Both are part of the agency's Centennial Challenges, a program that invites publicly funded teams to develop advanced technologies and revolutionary solutions that will further NASA's goal of establishing a permanent human presence in space. The first place team in each competition wins $1 million and the runner-up receives $500,000.
The Huskies representing the PSTDL, the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Michigan Tech on this national stage include undergraduate, master's, and PhD students. They are led by Paul van Susante, assistant professor, MTU's Lou and Herbert Wacker Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and the lab's director.
PRIMROSE and TEMPEST, the technology solutions developed by the PSTDL teams for Break the Ice and Watts on the Moon, respectively, showcase the innovative ideas and top-notch engineering skills of students at Michigan Tech.
Meet PRIMROSE
Full Name: Persistent Regolith In-situ Mining Remote Operated Surface Excavator
For NASA's Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, competitors were tasked with developing technology to aid astronauts in excavating the moon's icy regolith. The rover PRIMROSE was the solution proposed by the Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab at Michigan Tech.
At two meters long, 1.4 meters in width and height, and weighing 330 kilograms, the PSTDL team designed and developed PRIMROSE with the abilities to excavate hardened lunar material and transport it long distances over the rocky, dusty surface of the moon's south pole. Controlled by astronauts from the moon's surface, PRIMROSE uses a modified chain trencher with a combination of point attack picks and paddles to dig down into hardened regolith surfaces. A conveyor belt transports the excavated material from the chain trencher to the rover's internal storage hopper.
Break the Ice Lunar Challenge
NASA announced the MTU PSTDL as one of six finalist teams for Break the Ice's fourth and final round—Phase 2, Level 3—in December 2023. The students and PRIMROSE traveled to Alabama in June for two days of live, head-to-head competition at the host facility designated by NASA: the Alabama A&M Agribition Center in Huntsville.
PRIMROSE stands for Persistent Regolith In-situ Mining Remote Operated Surface Excavator. In the finals, Huskies piloted the rover through NASA's series of trials, consisting of an indoor excavation portion and an outdoor navigation and payload delivery portion—both with a time limit of one hour.
In the excavation portion, PRIMROSE had to dig as much material as possible from a 300-cubic-foot concrete slab. A gravity-offloading crane supported five-sixths of the rover's weight during the exercise, simulating the moon's reduced gravity, and the concrete had qualities "similar to a permanently shadowed crater located at the Moon's South Pole," according to NASA. In the navigation and delivery portion of the finals, the students drove PRIMROSE through a twisty 300-meter raised track made up of "slopes, boulders, pebbles, rocks, and gravel" to deliver a payload, then return to the starting point.
Although PRIMROSE did not finish in first or second place, NASA recognized the rover as one of three that performed exceptionally well in the excavation portion of the finals. Along with the two prize-winning teams, NASA awarded PSTDL students the opportunity to use the thermal vacuum chambers at its Marshall Space Flight Center to continue testing and development.
"I am very proud of the team's performance," said van Susante. "The team worked well together to perform optimally during the competition. That includes the travel, the logistics, the hardware and software, the controls and MTU representation. Our rover, PRIMROSE, performed as designed during the competition in the excavation event and the transportation event. I am very happy with the result, and each and every student can be very proud of their accomplishments."
Break the Ice began in 2020, when teams submitted design proposals for robotic systems that could accomplish NASA's set tasks. First, the robots need to be able to traverse the volatile terrain of the lunar south pole—the moon's southernmost region, which includes permanently shadowed regions that never receive sunlight. The lunar south pole is the targeted landing site of NASA's planned Artemis III mission, which will send humans back to the moon's surface for the first time since 1972. Second, they must be able to dig down into the lunar surface to mine the icy, dusty moon dirt, or regolith, that makes up the lunar surface. Last, they have to be able to transport the excavated regolith to a secondary location for in situ resource utilization, or ISRU—the practice of using resources found on the surfaces of other planets to make life in outer space more realistic, sustainable, and affordable.
With PRIMROSE, the PSTDL team advanced through Break the Ice's first three rounds of competition. The students moved from their initial design for the rover in Phase 1 to constructing a prototype, complete with technical reports, engineering designs, and test plans, in Phase 2, Level 1. Next, they tested PRIMROSE's capabilities by putting it into action in Phase 2, Level 2. Each team conducted a 15-day livestreamed demonstration trial at their home test site, with an in-person visit by NASA Centennial Challenges observers.
"What impresses me the most with this batch of competitors is their innate ability to each find unique ways to approach the solution," said Naveen Vetcha, Break the Ice's challenge manager. "Each site visit provided our subject matter experts with new ways to think about this technology and operations, and some of these teams expanded our expectations for how to bridge this technology gap."
Team members who accompanied PRIMROSE to Alabama were Audrey Alexander, Robin Austerberry, Parker Bradshaw, Max Decker, Connor Dinkelmann, Benjamin Engle, Lucas Frank, Austen Goddu, Heather Goetz, Marcello Guadagno, Mason Krause, Mackenzie Miller, Gregory Redlon, and Jay Sweeney. Other team members who contributed to Phase 2, Level 3 included Leif Christensen, William Jenness, George Johnson, Austin McDonald, Kjia Moore, Matthew Oujiri, Elija Sierra, and Walker Schumann.
MTU students who contributed in Break the Ice's previous levels and phases were Dana Brouse, Will Galvin, Ted Gronda, Brian Johnson, Hunter McGillivray, Collin Miller, Joe Primeau, Mohamed Salem, and Suhayb Zeqlam.
Meet TEMPEST
Full Name: TEthered Mechanism for Persistent Energy Storage and Transmission
NASA asked Watts on the Moon Challenge competitors to develop novel systems for energy distribution, management, and storage to help facilitate lunar and space exploration. MTU's Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab proposed TEMPEST.
The PSTDL team designed TEMPEST to transmit power up to three kilometers into the moon's permanently shaded regions, or PSRs, where solar power use is problematic. TEMPEST distributes power using flat aluminum tethers and stores it using a lithium iron phosphate battery. The PSTDL developed a battery management system in-house, allowing the team to have more control over form factor, telemetry gathered, and battery protection decisions.
TEMPEST is based on the PSTDL's winning entry in the 2020 NASA BIG Idea Challenge: a rover named T-REX that lays down lightweight, superconducting cable to bring power to the moon's PSRs.
Watts on the Moon Challenge
Another team of students from Michigan Tech's Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab earned a chance to prove their promising design for a lunar power management system to NASA engineers in the final round of the Watts on the Moon Challenge: Phase 2, Level 3 of the competition. The finale was held in July at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Unfortunately, Michigan Tech had to withdraw from the challenge's final round after technical difficulties caused them to miss the deadline.
At Glenn Research Center, finalists pitted their prototypes against each other using the center's thermal vacuum chamber and a simulated lunar environment.
The vacuum chamber mimics the low temperatures and absence of pressure found at the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar south pole, allowing teams to test their technology while troubleshooting and mitigating any issues that could occur in its possible future use on the moon.
After the PSTDL was announced as a Watts on the Moon finalist in June 2023, van Susante said the team was thrilled to have a chance to show NASA what their solution, TEMPEST—which stands for TEthered Mechanism for Persistent Energy Storage and Transmission—could do. "I think we have something that's very promising," he said. "We'd love to see the technology we design eventually go to the moon, and this is a great way to show NASA that it can perform well in lunar conditions."
What is ISRU?
In situ resource utilization, or ISRU, is the practice of using resources found on the surfaces of other planets. ISRU is critically important to NASA's efforts to establish a long-term human presence in space. Launching food, fuel, and other supplies from Earth would be incredibly expensive. By practicing ISRU and making use of what they have available on the moon, Mars, or in other locations in the solar system, astronauts will be able to make life in outer space more realistic, sustainable, and affordable.
"Our goal is to provide solutions to make living on the Moon a reality, and Break the Ice directly contributes to that mission," said Denise Morris, Centennial Challenges program manager, in a NASA press release. "Excavating lunar regolith before humans arrive on the Moon will allow us to find uses for that material before they get there—if we could build a lunar habitat out of the regolith or extract the water for our astronauts to drink, that means less mass on our vehicles and less work for our crews."
Although the PSTDL team did not take part in the finals, team members still plan on demonstrating TEMPEST's functionality in Michigan Tech's own vacuum chamber during the fall 2024 semester.
To live and work on the moon for an extended period of time, astronauts will need many things—nearly all of which will require electricity. But because of how the moon orbits the Earth, supplying that power is trickier than just putting up a few solar panels. The lunar night is almost two weeks long, with long stretches of extreme darkness and frigid temperatures, and some regions of the moon are permanently shaded. To help solve such problems, NASA's Watts on the Moon Challenge, begun in 2020, asked teams from around the country to design new technologies for storing, distributing, and managing energy for use throughout the lunar day/night cycle.
The PSTDL team began exploring lunar power management through their participation in the 2020 NASA BIG Idea Challenge, where they devised a system of tethered rovers to navigate the uncertain terrain and deliver power via superconducting cables. After winning the Artemis Award in that competition, they enhanced their design to incorporate a power management system and battery storage hub to connect power infrastructure elements using updated designs for rovers and electronics.
They tested TEMPEST's various capabilities in Michigan Tech's Dusty Thermal Vacuum Chamber—the central feature of the PSTDL. The chamber can reach a low temperature of minus 196 degrees Celsius, a high temperature of 150 degrees Celsius, and a vacuum of 10E-6 Torr. It can also hold up to 3,000 pounds of lunar regolith simulant.
Watts on the Moon team lead Travis Wavrunek, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering at Michigan Tech, said the PSTDL team is motivated not just by the challenge of enabling human presence on the moon. They also want to make a difference here on Earth.
"We see space as a field in which to do research that can help people closer to home," said Wavrunek. "Many of the lunar technologies that we develop for space have huge implications for Earth. For instance, the battery science and thermal management problem-solving we do for the Watts on the Moon Challenge is huge for things like electric vehicles. And energy storage and transmission is important for getting away from coal power and transitioning toward renewable energies."
Wavrunek said the team's biggest hurdle in the previous round of the challenge, Phase 2, Level 2, was the short timeline. "Getting all the parts ordered in time, getting all the design work done ahead of the February deadline—it was a very short timeline for us to do all this work, particularly because everyone on our team is also a student," Wavrunek said. "Everyone's taking classes. Everyone's doing exams. We have breaks in the school year, when everyone goes back home for a time. Even if we'd had another four months, it would have been a short timeline, especially given some of the long lead times on parts and the supply chain issues we ran into. But we worked together and got everything in on time. I'm really proud of the team."
After learning that the team advanced to Level 3, van Susante echoed that sentiment. "The team has done amazing work," he said. "I can't speak highly enough of all they've done."
Alongside Wavrunek, team members who contributed to the Phase 2, Level 2 competition included Parker Bradshaw, Nate Bruursema, Chuck Carey, Isaac Couling, Austen Goddu, Marcello Guadagno, Brian Johnson, Austin McDonald, Hunter McGillivray, Collin Miller, Erik Van Horn, and Suhayb Zeqlam. In Watts on the Moon's Phase 2, Level 3 finale, Bradshaw, Bruursema, Carey, Couling, Goddu, Guadagno, McDonald, and Wavrunek were joined by Audrey Alexander, Caleb Bigham, Lucas Frank, and research engineer George Johnson.
Other Huskies who contributed in previous levels and phases of Watts on the Moon included Sean Bennink, Kyle Bruursema, Will Jenness, Nick McKenzie, Matthey Sietsema, and research engineer Ben Wiegand, as well as many others.
Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to nearly 7,500 students from more than 60 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.
