The School of Engineering’s NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge team earned an NC Space Grant award to fund its participation in NASA’s international competition in April.
The NC Space Grant’s Team Experience and Competition Awards help undergraduate and graduate teams participate in events either sponsored or sanctioned by NASA and other STEM-related organizations. Campbell’s HERC team is one of 11 teams in North Carolina awarded for competitions this year.
“These funds are so important in helping us provide an outstanding extracurricular experience for our Campbell Engineering majors, guided by their faculty advisor, Dr. Lee Rynearson,” said Dr. Jenna Carpenter, founding dean for the School of Engineering. “We are looking forward to another great rover from this year’s team.”
Campbell’s HERC team took home two national awards at the 2021 NASA competition, its first two awards since it first entered in 2019. Campbell engineers won the Project Review Award and the Ingenuity Award in the college/university division, besting schools from all over the world in those categories.
The annual NASA HERC competition is an engineering design challenge designed to engage students in the next phase of human space exploration. The event challenges students to create a human-powered vehicle designed to traverse the simulated surface of another world and complete mission tasks along the way. Student teams design, build and test technologies that enable rovers to perform in a variety of environments.
Dr. Lee Rynearson, assistant professor of engineering and the team’s faculty mentor, said his students are putting its resources to good use, “pushing their knowledge and skills forward along the way.”
“This year, the students have performed new types of analysis to design advanced parts that have high performance at higher cost,” Rynearson said. “Support from NC Space Grant allows students to innovate more freely — and then to learn even more when they have to manufacture their complex designs.”
2021 NASA HERC AWARDS
Project Review Award
- Awarded to the team that has the best combination of written reviews and formal presentations.
- Judges: “Impressive reporting, specifically in the vehicle criteria and task and mission component category.”
Ingenuity Award
- Awarded to the team that addressed a problem with audacity and creativity.
- Judges: “This year’s winner in the college and university division presented us with a unique and innovative frame design using unexpected materials and a modular system to tackle the engineering challenge of a rigid and lightweight chassis system.”