HUNTSVILLE — A student team from the University of Alabama in Huntsville placed third in the 2025 NASA Student Launch Challenge – University Student Launch Initiative (USLI).
The 25th annual competition saw 53 teams from colleges and universities across the U.S. face off in one of NASA’s Artemis Student Challenges. The project involved hundreds of participants from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico designing, building, testing and launching a high-powered rocket carrying a scientific or engineering payload near the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
“The mission this year required the team to design a capsule that carried simulated astronauts – STEMnauts – and to autonomously send data to a NASA ground station reporting specific measurements related to survivability of the STEMnauts after landing,” said UAH team advisor, Dr. David Lineberry, a principal research engineer for the UAH Propulsion Research Center and team advisor.
The goal of the STEMnaut “crew” was to relay real-time data to the student team’s mission control, just as the Artemis astronaut crew will do as they explore the lunar surface…