JPL Sponsors Space Vehicle Landing Competition

2/26/2015 Susan Mumm, Media Specialist

Illinois teams are invited to compete in designing safe landings for a space vehicle on a planet in JPL's contest.

Written by Susan Mumm, Media Specialist

Dr. A. Miguel San Martín, JPL's Chief Engineer of the Guidance and Control Section
Dr. A. Miguel San Martín, JPL's Chief Engineer of the Guidance and Control Section

Aerospace Engineering and other University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students will have the opportunity to take part in a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) sponsored competition to design algorithms for safely landing a vehicle on a planet.

 

Teams of three to 10 undergraduate and graduate students can compete for prizes of $2,500 for first place; $1,500 for second place; and $1,000 for third place.
Each team must produce a poster as part of the competition requirements.

The objective of this competition is to design an algorithm that can process a photograph and an elevation map to identify safe landing zones for the descending vehicle. In order to choose the best landing site, rocks, boulders, craters, and steep slopes or inclines will need to be taken into account.

A letter of intent to participate must be emailed to ARES

at
at

ae [dot] illinois [dot] edu by March 15. The poster must be received by April 23 and the competition will be held April 25.

 

The competition was announced Friday as part of a talk by Dr. A. Miguel San Martín, JPL’s Chief Engineer of the Guidance and Control Section, and a JPL Fellow.

San Martín was Chief Engineer for the Guidance, Navigation, and Control subsystem for the Mars Pathfinder mission, the Mars Exploration Rovers, and the Mars Science Laboratory where he was also the Deputy Phase Lead for Entry, Descent, and Landing and co-inventor of the SkyCrane landing architecture. He spoke on “The Evolution of Guidance, Navigation, and Control in Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing.

 


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This story was published February 26, 2015.