PISCES Student Lead: Vincent Adams Student Team Members: Vincent Adams, Levi Campbell, Jack Hamrick, Clyde Miller, Saul Samiljan, Nathaniel Stringer, Canon Swain, Lance Yearick Faculty: Dr. Karl Siebold and Dr. Matthew Haslam Scans of Jupiter’s moon Europa have discovered a saltwater ocean under sheets of ice. These oceans could support life but lack explicit evidence. Currently NASA’s Clipper mission is enroute to make further scans. The successor mission would be to explore the oceans themselves. The PISCES (Probe Investigating Subsurface Cold Europan Seas) capstone project has developed and tested a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROUV) designed to explore a simulated Europan ocean in search of a habitable environment. The ROUV measures pH, salinity, pressure, and temperature, to scan for signs of life. Fitting within a small payload, the ROUV is 40cm long, 25.8cm wide, and 12cm tall. The ROUV has high underwater maneuverability, able to move in five free degrees of freedom up to 15cm/s. The ROUV relays data back to the data storage device via a tether. All sensors and materials withstand a temperature of -3°C. RED HAVEN Student Lead: Aidan Maney Student Team Members: Shahan Ahmed, Aidan Maney, Skye Mayo, Karim Hernandez, Devin Trujillo, Kevin Zamora Faculty: Dr. Karl Siebold and Dr. Matthew Haslam Red Haven is a Mars analog habitat concept designed to support long-duration surface missions through a compact, modular, and semi-autonomous system. The project seeks to advance the development of controlled life support systems by integrating essential regulation technologies within a deployable structure suitable for extraterrestrial applications. This habitat emphasizes structural and semi-autonomous monitoring reliability, ensuring safe and resilient operation during prolonged crew isolation, harsh environmental exposure, and limited maintenance capability inherent to Martian surface missions. The design approach is grounded in system-level integration and resilience under resource- constrained conditions analogous to Mars. Material selection, structural form, and power redundancy were chosen to simulate challenges posed by low-pressure, variable thermal loads, and limited energy availability. A distributed sensing and control architecture has been implemented to ensure real-time monitoring and semi-autonomous actuation, both critical for sustaining life and reducing crew workload. Red Haven explores pathways for future modular expansion, field testing, and eventual adaptation into full-scale Martian or lunar systems. By addressing both the technical requirements and operational challenges of off- world habitation, Red Haven contributes to a scalable framework for sustainable human presence in space.
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SENIOR CAPSTONE PROJECTS
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