Students awarded Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium Scholarship for senior design project

MSOE students are taking their Lunabotics senior design project to new heights after being awarded the Undergraduate Research Scholarship from the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium (WSGC). The WSGC awarded scholarships to Wisconsin students, educators, faculty and research teams conducting NASA-aligned research, STEM education and aerospace outreach across the state.

The team of mechanical engineering seniors is comprised of Mitchell Brust, Ruth Dobberpuhl, Clayton Fliss, Ethan Haselwood and Ian Rasmussen. For their senior design project, the team is designing and building a test chamber that can be used by the MSOE Lunabotics team to develop their vehicle for the annual NASA Lunabotics Competition hosted by NASA’s Artemis Program at Kennedy Space Center. The NASA Lunabotics Competition challenges university teams to design, build and operate autonomous lunar mining rovers that simulate real-world excavation tasks.

The MSOE team’s test chamber will be a smaller, more affordable version of NASA’s Artemis arena, and could be replicated by other universities in the future. “The chamber will be large enough to accommodate the Lunabotics team’s prototype moon rover and will include an air filtration system to prevent lunar regolith simulant from escaping into the lab,” explained Dobberpuhl. “Ultimately, we hope the chamber becomes a valuable resource for research, testing and community outreach.”

Read the full article on: MSOE.edu

Original Post Date: 1.14.26

Author Credit: MSOE University

Image Credit: MSOE University