Student-Led Innovations for the Moon

This past year, the NUSTARS Space Technology team competed in NASA’s Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts - Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) challenge. The team proposed STARDUST: a robust plan for the sustained development of a lunar colony. This proposal included a long list of elements, such as 3D-printed shelter designs and analysis, an improved lunar rover, regolith-based thermal insulation, a scheme for identifying and extracting helium-3 on the moon, and more.

(a) Flexural stress strain curve for 95 wt% polymer-regolith composites, (b) three 95 wt% composite samples corresponding to three data points in (a), (c) FEA of shear stress on PRISM rover housing application

The team, led by Victoria Israel (Mechanical Engineering ‘26), spun out several related research projects, such as the development and characterization of cutting-edge materials for both construction and thermal insulation in lunar applications. They also began development of a lunar rover that will compete in NASA’s 2025-2026 Lunabotics competition cycle. The former two groups are currently collaborating across departments at Northwestern to reimagine space materials here in Evanston, while the rover team looks to push the boundaries of what robotics can accomplish in harsh lunar environments.

Render of our ‘ECLIPSE’ rover proposal, now being developed for the NASA Lunabotics competition