5 US Universities emerge as winners at NASA’s 2024 Human Lander Challenge

The Human Lander Challenge is an initiative that supports the efforts of NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate’s (ESDMD’s) to explore innovative solutions for multiple Human Landing System (HLS) challenge areas. Through this challenge, the participant students become significant partners in NASA’s advancement in HLS concepts, technologies and approaches.

Image source: HuLC

Study in US: Five US universities have won the NASA’s 2024 Human Lander Challenge. The winning universities have worked on different innovative concepts which addressed complex problems that arise during the impending Moon exploration campaign in managing lunar dust.

NASA and its alliance are trying to address the key challenge of dust mitigation during the landing of the Artemis mission. The winners are part of the 12 finalists, selected in March 2024. They proposed systems-level solutions which can possibly be applied in the coming years to manage and prevent the clouds of dust that get created when the spacecraft touches the surface of the moon. It is called lunar plume surface interaction.

NASA’s 2024 Human Lander Challenge Details

University of Michigan is the overall winner and it was awarded $10,000. The paper name of the university is “ARC-LIGHT: Algorithm for Robust Characterization of Lunar Surface Imaging for Ground Hazards and Trajectory”, the second winner is the University of Illinois and the paper name was “HINDER: Holistic Integration of Navigational Dynamics for Erosion Reduction”, the third winner is University of Colorado, paper name is “Lunar Surface Assessment Tool (LSAT): A Simulation of Lunar Dust Dynamics for Risk Analysis”, the fourth university which won the Excellence in Systems Engineering Awards is “Plume Additive for Reducing Surface Ejecta and Cratering (PARSEC)”, and another Excellence in Systems Engineering Award was won by the Texas A&M University.

The University of Illinois received an award of $5,000 and the University of Colorado Boulder received a $3,000 award.

NASA's Human Lander Challenge Details

In NASA's Human Lander Challenge, the undergraduate and postgraduate students were told to design solutions to mitigate, understand and manage the dust plums that the astronauts will face during the lunar landings.

"When Artemis astronauts land on the Moon, their spacecraft will stir up a cloud of dust. This effect is called plume-surface interaction (PSI) and it can increase risks caused by lunar dust. NASA’s 2024 HuLC competition seeks near-term, innovative solutions that can help NASA understand, mitigate, and manage the impacts of lunar PSI. Potential solutions might include the development of dust shields, creating flight instrumentation dedicated to managing plume surface interactions, finding ways to see through the dust cloud during landing, or tracking dust during ascent and descent," reads HuLC's official statement.

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