OSU selected for NASA challenge for fifth year in a row

NASA has selected Oklahoma State University as one of five universities to compete in its 2015 Exploration Habitat Academic Innovation Challenge, making OSU the only school to be selected each year since the challenge began five years ago. 

“We’re honored to be the only university with the distinction of five consecutive years of involvement, which have provided challenging projects for students to design and for evaluation by NASA scientists and engineers. Though the funds are limited, we have made excellent use of the resources to establish a long-term program in deep space habitation at OSU,” said Jamey Jacob, an OSU aerospace engineering professor. “Partnering with Steve Mark’s NASA Education Program at OSU, we’ve also provided excellent outreach for students across the entire country.” 

Each university has a specific project to work on for the challenge. OSU will develop a deployable greenhouse for food production on long-duration exploration missions, including the moon and Mars. Students from six departments across the OSU campus will work on the project as part of their senior design course.

This year’s faculty researchers at OSU, who serve as advisers for the students, include Jamey Jacob, mechanical and aerospace engineering; Steve O’Hara, architecture and architectural engineering; Joe Cecil, industrial engineering and management; Paul Weckler and Ning Wang, biosystems and agricultural engineering; and Steve Marks, aviation education.

“After five years of coordinating the challenge, we continue to be impressed by the innovative university proposals to advance capabilities of spaceflight,” said Tracy Gill, NASA lead for the X-Hab Challenge. “We look forward to lending our experience to the teams, to learning from their fresh approaches and to guiding the efforts through the systems engineering process.”

In addition to OSU’s project, the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee will design a carbon-fiber/fused deposition modeling spacecraft structural fabrication system. The University of South Alabama will develop a volumetric adsorption system for CO2 and H2O multicomponent isotherm measurements. The University of Vermont will design a “smart-structure” deployable airlock. The University of Colorado at Boulder will work with OSU to construct a deployable greenhouse for food production. However, CU will focus more on the hardware of the project while OSU will be more focused on the habitat.

Grants will be administered to the universities by the National Space Grant Foundation to fund the design, development and evaluation of the systems by members of the NASA teams during the 2014-2015 academic year.

For more information, contact Jamey Jacob at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .