For a diverse group of Embry-Riddle students, a looming challenge in space exploration taught them to push the envelope of engineering innovation and global collaboration. The 15 students, who came from all of Embry-Riddle’s campuses, were part of NASA’s 2022 Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts — Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) contest, which gave elite undergraduate and graduate teams from around the globe the chance to design solutions to pressing problems in spaceflight.
“This is real-world mission design,” said Dr. Davide Conte, assistant professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Prescott Campus, who served as one of the facul- ty leads for the Embry-Riddle team. “It brings together all of our campuses and is a great opportunity for students.” The 2022 contest, managed by the National Institute of Aerospace on behalf of NASA, examined how humans will live and work on other worlds. The Embry-Riddle team collaborated with 15 students from the Polytechnic Institute of Milan in Italy, among Europe’s top aerospace schools. Their task was to create a propellant that could be sustainably extracted from the Martian regolith, and the results were judged by a panel that included experts from The Boeing Company, SpaceX and Lockheed Martin, among other top aerospace companies.
The problem the students faced meshed perfectly with Conte’s current research, which is aimed at using near-earth asteroids to gather fuel and other resources for long-term space missions. Conte has been involved with expanding Embry-Riddle’s participation in RASC-AL since he joined the Prescott Campus faculty in 2019. “The RASC-AL competition has many benefits for students,” said Conte.
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