10/18/2022 Taylor Tucker
Written by Taylor Tucker
First-year mechanical engineering master’s student Nawaf Rasheed is participating in NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge. Touted as the world’s largest annual space and science hackathon in the world, the challenge allows participants to tackle real-world design problems using actual space data.
“It was a dramatic experience, with 72 hours of continuous work,” Nawaf said of the challenge, which took place during the weekend of October 1. “We won as a team and qualified for the global judging phase.”
Nawaf’s team passed Phase 1, in which they submitted a complete project for local judging. Their project was selected by their local panel to move on for Phase 2’s global judging, during which all global nominees are reviewed by an expert team of NASA faculty and space agency partners including the National Space Activities Commission of Argentina, Australian Space Agency, Bahrain National Space Agency, Brazilian Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, ESA (European Space Agency), Indian Space Research Organization, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Mexican Space Agency, Paraguayan Space Agency and South African National Space Agency.
“I met creative students and employees from the industry,” Nawaf said. “[The hackathon] was an excellent opportunity to network with them.”
Space Apps is intended to be a collaborative effort with the goal of fostering interest in Earth and space science and exploration while raising awareness of the space data available around the world through NASA and its space agency partners. The 2022 challenge was to outfit a Mars habitat for a one-year mission using 3D printers. “Your habitat has been pre-constructed for you, but, other than 3D printers, it doesn’t have most of the things you need to live and work,” the design prompt read. “Your challenge is to design tools, furniture, and other items to assist you on your one-year mission.”
The team’s project, “3D Prototype Design Ideas for Artemis IV,” proposed sustaining a living environment on Mars through the use of geodesic dome structures produced using thermoplastics, metals, and the basalt-concrete hybrid “Mars-crete.”
“This prototype solves the NASA Space Apps challenge by providing a detail-oriented outline of what is required to sustain life on another planet, and how NASA can develop tools, textiles, habitats, spacesuits, and all of the necessary components of survival using current 3D laser printing technologies that have already been developed,” the team wrote.
“The most rewarding part was that we were converting [something that was just] an idea in our minds to a well-designed Mars habitat,” Nawaf said.
The team now awaits results from the global panel. If selected for Phase 3 (executive judging), their project will be reviewed by an executive committee comprised of experts from NASA and space agency partners. Winners will be announced in December 2022.