AAE students' Mars pioneering base work wins AIAA best paper award
A paper authored by Elizabeth Marandola (MSAAE ’17) and a team of AAE graduate and undergraduate students was selected as the “Best Space Architecture Student Paper” recipient by the AIAA Space Architecture Technical Committee.
Marandola was the lead author on the paper with AAE students Amy Comeau, Reshef Elisha, Noah Gordon, Benjamin Hilker, Kevin LeCaptain, L. Pablo Podesta, Glynn Smith, Michael Weiss and Steven A. Zusack as co-authors. The paper resulted from the AAE 59000 “Human Journey to Mars” course, taught by Dr. Sarag Saikia.
The paper, “Exploration Systems Requirements To Establish A Sustainable Human Presence on Mars,” summarized an assessment of what technologies and systems would be required to develop a continuously manned base on the surface of Mars. It focused on what specific systems would be needed to support crewed missions, such as habitation systems, environmental control and life support systems, as well as rovers, power generation systems, and greenhouses. It also detailed a timeline for the building of a Martian base – comparable to the U.S. scientific research station, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, in Antarctica -- that would allow for technological advancements of the selected systems and fit a feasible launch schedule.
The work is timely as NASA, international partners, and U.S. industry are working to return to the Moon in the 2020s, and that will pave the way to Mars, possibly in the 2030s.
“We were excited to learn that we received this award,” Marandola says. “The paper was the culmination of what we learned and researched over the course of the class. Having our work specifically recognized by the Space Architecture Technical Committee of AIAA is an honor.”
The award will be given at the Excellence in Aerospace Recognition luncheon Sept. 18 as part of the AIAA Space and Astronautics Forum in Orlando, Fla.
Marandola currently works at Sierra Nevada Corporation in the Space Systems Group supporting SNC’s efforts on NASA’s NextSTEP-2 Habitation Systems program.