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NEW YORK — Five US universities have won NASA’s 2024 Human Lander Challenge (HuLC) for different innovative concepts addressing the complex issue of managing lunar dust during the impending Moon exploration campaign Artemis, the space agency said.
Dust mitigation during the landing of the Artemis mission is a key challenge that NASA and its partners aim to address in exploring the lunar South Pole region and establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon.
The team from the University of Michigan was selected as the overall winner, NASA said. The university was awarded $10,000.
The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign bagged the second prize and a $5,000 award, followed by the University of Colorado Boulder which received a $3,000 award.
Further, Texas A&M University and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott bagged the Excellence in Systems Engineering award.
The universities are part of the 12 finalists, selected in March 2024, and developed proposed systems-level solutions that could be potentially implemented within the next 3-5 years to manage or prevent clouds of dust -- called lunar plume surface interaction -- that form as a spacecraft touches down on the Moon.
The teams were selected after the final round held between June 25 and 27 near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
Don Krupp, associate programme manager for the HLS Programme said that “managing and reducing the threat of lunar dust is a formidable challenge to NASA.”
He added that the space agency is “committed to real solutions for our long-term presence on the Moon’s surface.”