Students to Drill Deep in NASA's Mars Ice Challenge

HAMPTON, Va., May 31, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA is kicking off its second Mars Ice Challenge at the agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Ten university teams will be challenged with extracting water from ice as NASA explores how to develop a sustainable environment for humans on the red planet.

News media are invited to cover the event from 10 a.m. to noon June 7. Students, faculty and other subject-matter experts will be available for interviews. Media should contact Kristyn Damadeo at 757-864-1090 or [email protected] for access to Langley.

The 10 teams will work at simulated Martian ice stations set up in Langley's research aircraft hangar. Each station will consist of layers of material and solid blocks of ice that students will drill into using equipment they designed and built.

The teams are from Alfred University in New York, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University in Boston, Rowan University in New Jersey, University of Tennessee Knoxville, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and West Virginia University.

The event is in partnership with the National Institute of Aerospace in Hampton and is called the RASC-AL (Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts ? Academic Linkages) Special Edition: Mars Ice Challenge.

For information about the challenge, go to:

http://specialedition.rascal.nianet.org/

SOURCE NASA