FUELING THE FUTURE
When astronauts reach the moon, they don’t just drift directly onto the lunar surface — they carefully board another spacecraft, called a human lander, to safely carry them from orbit to landing. With the goal of taking crewed missions to the moon for the first time since the early 1970s, new landers will have an expanded purpose — functioning as living quarters for astronauts where they can collect samples, complete experimentation, test new technology and observe the moon environment. Annually, an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University student team competes in NASA’s Human Lander Challenge (HLC), a competition that explores innovative solutions, existing technology and potential development areas for the Human Landing System (HLS). David Clay (’26), a student in Aerospace Engineering and media officer for the team, emphasized the importance of safe, effective and efficient human landers.
“When sending HLS to the moon, there is no ‘redo,’” Clay said. “These vehicles are meant to be and will be crewed, and ensuring the safety of our partnering astronauts is paramount. There are many complex systems that must be designed when human factors are involved, which makes margins of safety larger and overall engineering more strenuous.”
Embry-Riddle’s team from the Prescott Campus, officially named the Professional Association of Research for Space Engineering Concepts (PARSEC), took home first place in the summer 2025 challenge. Focused on cryogenic, or super-chilled, fuel storage and transfer for the upcoming Artemis III mission, the team began by determining how they would measure the propellant a spacecraft carries while in microgravity. “Think of it like a car on Earth. You can weigh the fuel tank to figure out how much fuel is left,” said Grant Bowers, a rising senior in Software Engineering and the deputy project manager. “But in space, your car is floating around, and the fuel tank can’t push on a sensor to weigh it because of the lack of gravity.”
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