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A young group of mechanical engineering students delivered a “wow” factor to judges at a NASA contest and came home with the best prototype award.

�ձ�av��Ƶ’s NOVA team was one of two �ձ�av��Ƶ entries selected to compete in Revolutionary Aerospace Systems – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL), an annual contest sponsored by NASA and administered by the National Institute of Aerospace for undergraduate and graduate students.

In March, NASA announced 14 finalists in the three categories with other competitors including engineering bluebloods like Virginia Tech (four teams) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Both of �ձ�av��Ƶ’s entries were competing in the small lunar servicing and maintenance robot division, meaning they each designed a rover to perform specific tasks on the moon. Finalists had 25 minutes to explain their project to judges at a Cocoa Beach, Florida, hotel June 2-4 and then faced 20 minutes of questions from the judges.

“We knew right away we wanted to have a wow factor to catch the judges’ eyes. We asked a contest official if we could drive our prototype out there during our presentation,” explained Channing Bloedel, who just completed his freshman year. NOVA, which stands for Next-gen Operations and Versatile Assistant, was the last of the 14 presenters, and the team had kept its prototype out of the public eye.

The contest official gave her blessing. So with about two minutes left in the presentation, graduate student advisers Nick Sieler and Dylan Stephens opened a couple side doors. 

With remote control in hand, Bloedel drove the prototype — about 2 feet x 2 feet x 2 feet — onto the presentation floor, its electrical motor whirring and the judges’ eyes opening wide. Members of the other teams, who formed most of the audience, stood to get a better view, and judges and audience members alike grabbed their cameras.

The prototype made a lap around the judges’ area and also demonstrated its multiarm and forklift systems.

Guest appearance at volleyball tourney

After formal questioning was over, one of the judges asked the eight-member NOVA team to take the rover to the beach during the RASC-AL volleyball tournament that evening. “We had it climb hills and rocks and plants on the beach in front of the judges,” said associate professor Todd Letcher, who was faculty adviser for both �ձ�av��Ƶ projects.

While that wasn’t part of the official judging, it certainly didn’t hurt the team’s chances when awards were announced the following night.

RASC-AL teams are not required to have a prototype, but this year 13 of the 14 finalists did, Letcher said. “The judges liked the fact that ours actually worked and wasn’t just a tabletop displays that looked nice,” he commented. Bloedel echoed that. “We had a fully functional, controllable prototype.” 

That meant that it had a boom arm with large biceps and a mobile arm suited for fine resolution work. The boom arm could pick up the mobile arm and position it to work on a hard-to-reach portion of a lunar structure.

Second life for NOVA rover

While RASC-AL 2025 is over, NOVA’s rover’s life did gain an extension.

It is being used in the master’s thesis project of mechanical engineering student Alex Schaar, who was part of last year’s RASC-AL competition. He created a gantry to demonstrate the moon’s decreased gravity. The gantry, similar to a crane, partially raises the rover off the ground. While still touching the ground, the gantry creates an environment in which only one-sixth of the earth’s gravitational pull is at work.

Crash course on aerospace engineering

NOVA was comprised of two juniors and seven freshmen. They were: Bryson Love, freshman, Charlestown, Indiana; Channing Bloedel, freshman, Rapid City; Tyler Iverson, junior, Le Mars, Iowa; Addison Walz, junior, Albertville, Minnesota; Evan Lauters, freshman, Hawarden, Iowa; Noah Larson, freshman, Mitchell; Aiden DeWit, freshman, Sioux Falls; Gavin Neu, freshman, Canton; and Noah Richardson, freshman, Omaha, Nebraska.

Letcher sent out an email at the beginning of the school year and found an enthusiastic group wanting to take a “moon shot” in a NASA contest.

Bloedel said, “When I first started on the team, I knew the finals were in Cocoa Beach. I thought there is no way I’m getting there.”

While they were good students and enthusiastic, they had absolutely no understanding of aerospace engineering. They spent September to November “researching the aerospace industry, trying to find every single white paper we could … and learn design ideas,” Bloedel said.

Letcher said, “We meet on Thursday nights for a few hours every week. I give them assignments, and they come back the next week with the assignments and more done.”

‘Happiest people I’ve ever seen’

Bloedel said by the end of fall semester, he was “pretty confident in my ability to describe the innovations going on in the industry.” Project submissions were due Feb. 24. The team waited nearly a month — until March 20 — to find out if “no way” had turned into excitement. Bloedel was in an adviser’s office when he heard about his team’s selection. “I was jumping up and down screaming with joy. It was definitely the top moment of my college career.”

He called the selection “a surreal” moment. When he and teammates were on Cocoa Beach during some free time June 2, Bloedel thought, “I am living the dream I thought would never happen.”

Letcher joined the students on the beach. “Several of the new guys were on the beach, and they were full of the biggest smiles. They looked like the happiest people I’ve ever seen.”

NASA tours, rocket launch

That wasn’t the end of the happiness. In addition to participating in the NASA contest, the 17 students and Letcher witnessed from the beach at their hotel the launching of a Falcon IX satellite rocket, saw the Saturn V rocket and other highlights of Kennedy Space Center, met Chuck “Sam” Gemar, a South Dakota native and retired astronaut, and toured Swamp Works, a NASA lunar testing area.

Letcher said, “It was a great time. Whatever excitement level they already had (before the contest), multiply it by 100 based on what they experienced there.”

If there was a downside to RASC-AL 2025, neither �ձ�av��Ƶ entry placed in their category or the overall standings as it had the previous two years.

Letcher said, “I think the competition was stronger than I’ve seen the last two times I went. We had seven teams in our category. I could have easily seen five or six of the teams winning. It was tough competition. Both (�ձ�av��Ƶ) teams did a great job.”

Pride, joy overshadow disappointment

The other team, “MANTIS: Maintenance and Navigation for Technical Infrastructure Support,” was comprised of senior design students Cameron Belair, Minneapolis; Mike Gross, Woodbury, Minnesota; and Quentin Strohm, Ames, Iowa. They designed a rover with the ability to lift 1,000 kilograms with loader arms that give it the appearance of a praying mantis.

“We tried to make the design as simple as possible so there are fewer things that could go wrong,” Belair said.

Letcher said, “I'm proud of our projects, and there isn't much we could have done to make them any better. The judges just liked the other ideas better. That’s going to happen sometimes.” 

While the teams built completely different rovers, they shared a confidence that their entry could be the winning entry.

Bloedel said, “When you come into something with high expectations and don’t necessarily meet them, there is some level of disappointment. But that disappointment definitely did not overshadow the proudness and sense of joy of being there in general and the amount of knowledge we had gained.”

Letcher is already looking forward to next year. “I’m hoping to have several teams next year. The excitement level of everybody is just through the roof.”