Members and advisers in New Mexico Tech’s Lunabotics Challenge team pose with their lunar-mining robot recently.
Courtesy photo

New Mexico Tech students placed 11th nationally among 71 teams that competed in a NASA-sponsored contest that challenges college students to design, build, and operate an autonomous lunar miner. New Mexico Tech competed for the first time along with other schools from across the country in the NASA Lunabotics Challenge, held May 22-27, 2022, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The New Mexico Tech team recently received its national ranking and announced that it received multiple awards in its debut NASA lunabotics competition performance:

  • Nova Award for Stellar Systems Engineering by a first-year team, NASA RMC Lunabotics Competition 2022
  • Best Project Management Plan, NASA RMC Lunabotics Competition 2022
  • “Teamwork Award,” 2022 Excellence Senior Design Conference at the University of Texas at Dallas
  • NASA MINDS Finalist, NASA MINDS Competition 2022

According to Dr. Arvin Ebrahimkhanlou, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering and team advisor, the New Mexico Tech team has been invited to participate in next year’s competition.

“Our motivation to inspire the next generation of curious minds is as strong as it has ever been,” he said.

Tech Lunabotics team members include: Mario Escarcega, Meghan Cephus, Donovan Caruso, Trung Le, Ethan Oesch, Juliana Barstow, Autumn Weber, Nicolas Sheerin, Nakii Tsosie, Quincy Bradfield, Marshal Gold, Jordan Tesillo, Kaleb Bjorkmann, Skyler Hughes, Alex Bethel, and Joseph Coston.

Katie Bauer, NMT Communications