SDSU Lunabotics Team Wins Big at NASA Lunabotics Competition
San Diego State University Lunabotics team, Team Vulcan, returned from NASA’s 2023 Lunabotics Competition as winners.
Team Vulcan, won three awards for the 2023 NASA Lunabotics competition:
- 1st Place, Proof of Life. $1,000
- 2nd Place for the Overall Competition. $3,000
- 3rd place, Presentation and Demonstration. $1,000
Team Vulcan was composed of 5 ME and 5 ECE students: Beqa Abulashvili, Juan Leyva Carrillo, Ian Phelps, Joshua Putris, Hunter Gavin, Jared Acosta, Dylan Lomas, Kevin Breslin, Leah Lafata, and Angelina Parker. They completed this Senior Design project with assignment to the NASA Lunabotics competition during the 2022-2023 Academic Year.
“This is an absolutely remarkable achievement,” said Senior Design professor and advisor Scott Shaffar. “Winning 1st Runner Up for the overall competition is incredible, especially given this was only our 2nd year participating in this competition.”
The competition consisted of 33 teams representing 32 schools from across the country, including: Iowa State (1st Place, Overall), Purdue, Marquette, Drexel, Colorado School of Mines, NYU, Texas A&M and Auburn.
Team Lead Leah Lafata reflected on how proud her group was of the competition results: “I can personally say the team worked very hard and had to work long hours and weekends to get the rover to the place it needed to be. The team and I are very proud of the rover we created and the outcome of the competition!”
SDSU’s Student Success Fee funded Team Vulcan's project for the 2023 NASA Lunabotics competition.
Read NASA’s News Release here.
