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For the fourth year in a row, South Dakota State University has qualified a team to the finals of a prestigious NASA competition — and this year’s team is composed of only freshmen and sophomores.

“This is an Aerospace Club team, so none of the students on the team are doing this for any class credit, and we have three sophomores and three freshman,” said faculty adviser Todd Letcher, who will lead the mechanical engineering students to the finals of the Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) competition in Cocoa Beach, Florida, June 2-4.

Judges selected 14 teams nationwide for four themes in this year’s RASC-AL contest, which is open to all universities.

SDSU is competing in lunar sample return concepts alongside Texas A&M and the University of Michigan. Teams selected in other categories include three entries from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and two from the University of Texas as well as Dartmouth and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Letcher added, “I don't know what every school has for team members, but we do know that most of them are usually older undergrads and grad students. The competition this year is going to be very tough. These are all major aerospace universities and major universities as a whole.”

Committed to continuing SDSU’s success

However, Letcher’s young troop doesn’t lack for confidence.

Bryson Love, a sophomore from Charlestown, Indiana, and the team lead, said, “It’s one thing to be a RASC-AL finalist, but it’s even cooler to be a RASC-AL finalist again. Seeing we got in was amazing, but I also saw the road ahead. We have a good chance of definitely winning best in theme.”

In the school’s three previous trips to the RASC-AL finals, SDSU won its category in 2023 and was second in its category and third overall in 2024. In 2025, for the third year in a row, SDSU was honored for building the best prototype. 

Other members of the 2026 RASC-AL team are sophomores Gavin Neu, of Canton, a former 2025 team member along with Love and Bennett Foster, of Sioux Falls; Rachel Ziegeldorf, of Mitchell; Alex Diersen, of Brookings; and Rylie-Sky Stoll, of Sioux Falls, are all freshman.

Love said there were 75 entries in the contest.

“Just because you’re not Virginia Tech or Texas A&M doesn’t mean you can’t compete.  Last year’s team and this year’s team are living proof of that. It’s intimidating, but it makes me want to compete harder, to be one step ahead of them (the other teams). The intimidation fuels my competitive drive,” he said.

To drill 60 inches below surface

The lunar sample return concept theme asks teams to design a mission and hardware to accomplish lunar sample returns in a variety of conditions, including figuring out how to keep samples at lunar conditions until they get back to a lab on earth to be tested. 

The SDSU team designed SELENE (Sample Extraction of Lunar Elements for Network Entry), which would be capable of drilling about 60 inches (1.5 meters) into the moon’s surface. The soil would be captured within a tube that includes the drill bit. The sample would be furthered sealed at a lunar base and returned to Earth for further examination.

The drill would include six drill bits and tubes. The drill could operate autonomously at preselected sites and would be attached to an autonomous rover.

To date, an American rover has not successfully performed drilling missions below the moon’s surface.

Love said, “We don’t know much about what is beneath the surface. The main challenge is to build a quality core sampler. We’re designing it to be a meter and a half deep. We don’t know what there is a meter and a half deep. A lot of assumptions have to be made and then justified based on known information.”

He called the ambiguous nature of the contest the biggest challenge the team faces. “It’s hard to justify our assumptions, especially for what is underneath the moon’s surface.”

Diersen, the drilling lead on the team, said, “The different properties of regolith we have to estimate to know how much torque is needed for the drill.”

Freshmen make huge strides

Regolith is lunar soil. In late August, when the team formed, the freshmen didn’t know what regolith was or how cold it is on the moon.

Love said, “To go from that to being able to explain these concepts now and compete at a national level is cool.”

Ziegeldorf said that has been the most enjoyable part of the project for her.  “To think how much we learned, especially in the last few months, it’s been crazy. I still feel like I don’t know much, but reflecting on the progress we have made in the last few months has been really rewarding,” she said.

Love added, “Each of us worked on a specific thing. By having a cohesive model, we are showing the judges we can compete against the most prestigious aerospace schools in the nation.”

Focus areas for other team members: Foster, research; Neu, operations; Stoll, environmental; and Ziegeldorf, return.

Finalists receive $7,000 stipend

Daniel Mazanek, RASC-AL program sponsor and senior space systems engineer from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, said, “The innovation and technical depth demonstrated this year are exemplary of the next generation of aerospace leaders. The strongest teams demonstrated not only creativity, but also the disciplined analysis and systems engineering required to develop credible solutions for space exploration challenges facing the agency.”

Each finalist receives a $7,000 stipend that can be used for travel and prototype construction. The top two teams at the finals receives an additional $7,000 stipend to make their presentation at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

In advance of the finals, the SDSU team will perform computer simulations of the drilling, use a 3D printer to manufacture the drill prototype, expand its technical paper, create a poster and prepare a 25-minute presentation. In addition to the presentation, teams receive a 20-minute grilling from a review panel of NASA and aerospace industry experts.

While plenty of challenges remain for the young team, Stoll said, “If other freshmen can do well, so can we.”