Shooting for the Moon

The six-member Moonbuggy team tied for third place in the college division of the Moonbuggy Race at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The competition, attended by 84 high school and college teams, required students to design and build a sturdy, collapsible, human-powered vehicle that addresses a series of engineering problems that are similar to problems faced by the original lunar rovers. Each entry, expected to be a proof-of-concept and engineering test model rather than a final production model, had to travel over a 0.51-mile, simulated lunar terrain course including craters, rocks, lava ridges, inclines and lunar soil. Other members of the Ohio State team were Sarah Sterbenz, a senior in integrated systems engineering, and, from welding engineering, junior Jared Proegler, team advisor and lab supervisor Josh McCarty, and Brian Love, senior and team co-captain.