U Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute – Humans have yet to visit Mars. Partly because it’s 140 million miles away and partly because we don’t have enough resources to sustain human life. The Utah Robotic Mining Project at the U is helping NASA solve this problem.
“The Utah Robotic Mining Project is a club on campus with the sole purpose of designing and constructing a robot to compete in the NASA robotic mining competition,” said Emily Herman, a mechanical engineer and member of the team.
Each year the team competes with over 50 schools at the NASA Kennedy Space Center. The point of the competition is to design a robot that is able to mine ice on Mars. Members of the team that placed seventh at the 2015-16 competition were Emily Sherman, Geoff Sowan, Stacey Murgia, Matthew Sheridan, Teresa Petty, David Denson, John Robe, Cole Mortenson, Matt Wilson and Kaitlin Hall.