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A proof-of-concept space probe has earned a student team recognition from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

Team ELSA (Europa Lander for Science Acquisition) took first place in the team category at the 2016 AIAA Region 5 Student Conference, and are now preparing to compete for a national award at the upcoming AIAA National Conference.

"We were already proud of the project and the papers we had written, but winning the conference really put in perspective its quality," said Scott Mende.

Mende was one of nine members of the team, which also included Darren Combs, Gabe Frank, Sara Grandone, Colton Hall, Daniel Johnson, Trevor Luke, Daniel Nowicki, and Ben Stringer.

The lander was commissioned by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. as a senior design project. All aerospace seniors take part in a year-long capstone project sponsored by an outside company or research lab. Projects are designed to solve real-world engineering problems being faced by the sponsor.

Ball was interested in a mission to land on Europa, a moon of Jupiter that is believed to have a large underground ocean. They asked the team to design and build a prototype probe that could collect, store, and transmit data to a ground station for a 100-hour mission. The company also wanted the device to be less complicated and less expensive when compared to a traditional lander.

With nine members, the team formed subgroups to create the different systems needed for the probe. Their final product was a spherical battery-operated pod that could house a series of scientific instruments and then relay the information to their ground station.

The students faced obstacles, most notably with software.

“Ball Aerospace requested that we use an FPGA, or field programmable gate array. This kind of chip is lightweight, has low power usage, and is very capable for computations, which makes it a popular choice for space applications. The difficulty is that it was much less user-friendly than other forms of coding," said Frank, who served as the overall project manager.

Grandone, a team programmer, agreed.

"We learned you can never overestimate the amount of time you'll need to test and troubleshoot software," said Grandone.

A key to the team’s success was their ability to work together.

"All the challenges and difficulties we faced were easier because everyone knew they could rely on each other," said Frank.

The project is now in the hands of Ball Aerospace. While NASA is planning a Europa mission for the 2020s, the current mission design does not include probe landers. However, aerospace professor and ELSA team advisor Bob Marshall said the project may still have a future.

"There isn't a scheduled experiment that could utilize these probes, but the work the students completed certainly demonstrates a valuable concept for future missions," said Marshall.

All senior projects are ultimately looking toward the future. Sometimes it’s for a future commercial product or industrial application, but a critical focus is also on the future of the students. The program aims to give participants real-world design experiences that require using the skills they’ve learned in all of their classes. ELSA communications lead Combs said the project definitely fit the bill.

��“Going through engineering you put a lot of faith in your professors and the people designing your curriculum, and winning the AIAA award, to me, meant I made the right decision in choosing aerospace at CU-�鶹ӰԺ,” said Combs.