RASC-AL Team places 2nd overall at 2022 Competition

(Cocoa Beach, Fl) After 9 years in a row of qualifying as finalists for the NASA Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) competition, the Illinois Space Society (ISS) secured a second place overall finish on behalf of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the first ever podium position at the competition in Illinois history!

Competing in Cocoa Beach Florida, the team competed with elite groups from MIT, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus, and countless others. With key assistance from advisors Dr. Michael Lembeck, Dr. Zachary Putnam and graduate student adviser Linyi “Tiger” Hou, an official partnership with Honeybee Robotics, and support from partners at Aerospace Corporation and Kinetic Upstream, the team was able to overcome an array of design challenges, and put forth a robust Mars Water-based ISRU architecture to support future Mars Systems.

Their design, the Mars Ice Thermal Harvesting Rig and ISRU Laboratory (MITHRIL) can be found here, and the accompanying NASA feature story here.

More details can be found on the UIUC Grainger College of Aerospace Engineering website here.