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UT Named Finalist in NASA’s 2020 Moon to Mars Ice & Prospecting Challenge

rasc-al logoA team from the University of Tennessee has been named one of 10 finalists in NASA’s RASC-AL Special Edition: Moon to Mars Ice & Prospecting Challenge for their project plan, “This is Now a Drill (TINAD).”

The team, being led by MABE Associate Professor Subhadeep Chakraborty, will be required to build a water extraction device that can perform four main tasks:

  1. Drill through a variety of unknown layers consisting of dirt, rock, clay and cement that simulate lunar and/or Martian terrain;
  2. Find solid ice frozen beneath these layers and determine how to extract water from that ice;
  3. Filter the extracted water;
  4. Use system telemetry to determine how many layers are encountered inside the test beds and provide a density profile for each of the layers.

The team will receive $10,000 to fund the development and testing of their prototype and travel expenses to NASA for the competition in June.

More information on the challenge can be found on the RASC-AL website.