JBU Students Place High at NASA Event
by June 27, 2011 12:00 am 72 views
A John Brown University team took top honors in one category and ninth in another at NASA’s second annual Lunabotics Mining Competition, held in late May at Kennedy Space Center.
The event, which had a field of 70 teams, is a university-level competition designed to engage and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The idea is for teams to design, build and test robots that might someday be applied to actual lunar excavation devices.
JBU’s team, consisting of Marshall Nicholson, Mike Anthes, Susanna Whittaker, Billy Strnad and David Penner, placed first in the “Systems Engineering Paper” category.
It placed ninth in a competition to determine which team could collect and deposit the most simulated lunar dirt.
“The team should be very proud of this accomplishment,” JBU associate professor and team advisor Will Holmes said in a news release.
“The team received a perfect 20 out of 20 points possible on the paper, and this result is a direct testament to the outstanding job of engineering design, analysis and management the team demonstrated throughout the project.”
Funding for the robot was provided by Arkansas Space Grant Consortium, NASA and JBU.