Mars Ascent Vehicle

for Interplanetary Crew

Summary

  • Managed a team of 20 that collaborated across 6 sub-teams and 4 time zones on a Mars Ascent Vehicle proposal

  • Executed tight timeline over 1 year, organized 10 design reviews, defined requirements, identified failure modes

  • Shortlisted by NASA as a finalist among 50 teams and presented at 18th International Planetary Probe Workshop

Mission

Developed a low-mass Mars Ascent Vehicle design to deliver two crew members from the Martian surface to the Low Mars Orbit.

Design limit: dry mass < 5,000 kg, wet mass < 20,000 kg, budget < 10 billion, ready to land on Mars by the end of 2034.

The video above is a rendering of our Mars Ascent Vehicle mission that I coordinated.

My Role

  • Recruit team members, appoint sub-team leads, and set up 6 sub-teams.

  • Outreach to professors and NASA experts for advice.

  • Lead weekly team meetings and attend sub-team meetings.

  • Define risk scenarios for each subsystem and mitigation activities and rank each risk based on consequence and likelihood

  • Define engineering requirements, including the rationale, priority, status, and how to verify that requirement has been met.

Results

  • Our team delivered a 30-page proposal and was shortlisted by NASA as a Finalist to receive a $6,000 award.

  • NASA announcement: link

  • University magazine coverage: link

Huge thanks to my teammates:

Aaron Bergen, Aidan Dobson, Albert Sun, Andrew Feng, Anwesha Thorat, Bradley Martin, Cameron Edwards, Cameron Gomez, Francisco Rodriguez, Jennah Saqib, Josh Solomon, Lance Mayhue, Matthew Ai, Mohammed Usama, Obadiah Kopchak, Presley Silahian, Riyana Jennifer Gobin, Satoshi Nakamura, Snigdha Vayalapadu, and Professor Anita Sengupta