Thursday night through Friday morning was a very long night for the Caltech Space Challenge participants. Many worked tirelessly through the night and morning to finish the final reports and presentations, due Friday at noon. The twelve-member jury met at the Athenaeum for lunch. They discussed their mission for the …

Thursday was the last full day of the 2017 Caltech Space Challenge. After a very useful Preliminary Design Review (PDR) on Wednesday, which helped the teams tune their final designs, the participants focused on writing their final reports and practicing their final presentations. This last full day started with another …

After a long night of work and hours of sleep that, for some, can be counted on one hand, the students gathered at 7 am to get on the bus to JPL on Wednesday morning. The thirty-two participants were welcomed to JPL by Tony Freeman, one of the Caltech Space …

Tuesday, the teams focused on developing and maturing their initial ideas engineered over the past two days. The teams worked hard to prepare for their Wednesday Preliminary Design Review (PDR) at JPL. The day started with two hours of uninterrupted work. With some help from Morpheus (Greek God of dreams …

After a long first night of work, lasting past midnight, the Caltech Space Challenge participants arrived at Caltech at 8 am. Still a little sleepy and very enthusiastic, they started the day with breakfast, then proceeded to a series of lectures. Three lectures were scheduled on Monday, with the first …

The 32 participants of the 2017 Caltech Space Challenge finally arrived to Caltech yesterday to start this epic competition. They were welcome by the organizers, Ilana and Thibaud, in the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at Caltech (GALCIT). After gathering together for introductory remarks both team Explorer and Voyager spent two hours …

Eight hundred and six. The total number of applications received for the 2017 Caltech Space Challenge. Greater than the 3 previous editions... combined. Selecting the 32 participants was a long and intense process yielding less than a 4% acceptance rate. It took almost 2 months, during which the organizers of …

We are proud to announce the official sponsor of the Caltech Space Challange: Airbus Defence & Space! Airbus is a world-leading company manufacturing planes, fighter jets, rockets, and satellites. They are the prime contractor of Arianespace’s Ariane 5, the world standard for heavy-lift launchers, that will launch the James Webb …

Seven students from the Base 11 STEM program came to Caltech on Monday (10/3/2016) and had the chance to participate in a mini Space Challenge! Ilana and Thibaud, co-chairs of the 2017 Challenge, organized a 25 min long challenge: build a rover to explore Mars. The two teams …

Interested in space? Like a challenge? The Caltech Space Challenge brings both together in a week-long design competition. You will work with the best students (undergraduate and graduate) from around the world to design Lunarport. More information on this will be given at the beginning of the competition. During the …

The applications for the 2017 Caltech Space Challenge will open on September 1, 2016 with a deadline in mid-December. Information about the application is currently available on the Application page to help students get started. Every 2 years, hundreds of students submit applications to the Caltech Space Challenge. Applicants come …

One year from this month, the 2017 Caltech Space Challenge will take place at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA. It will be during Caltech's spring break: March 26-31, 2017. The Caltech Space Challenge is a 5-day international student space mission design competition. Thirty-two students from a wide …

Dr. Paul Dimotakis (Caltech), Dr. Jakob van Zyl (Caltech/JPL), and Dr. Anthony Freeman (Caltech/JPL) will be the advisors for the 2017 Caltech Space Challenge. Their role is to give guidance to the student leads (Ilana Gat and Thibaud Talon) and participants throughout the Challenge. Professor Dimotakis was an …

Ilana Gat and Thibaud Talon have been selected to be the next organizers of the 2017 Caltech Space Challenge. They are both PhD students in Aerospace Engineering at Caltech. They succeed to Hayden Burgoyne and Niccolo Cymbalist, the co-leads of the 2015 edition. Ilana is working on sub-grid scale modeling …

With incredibly impressive results from both teams, the jurors had a very difficult decision. Both teams showed outstanding creativity and technical achievement in their mission designs, but, in the end, a winner had to be chosen. Because of their outstanding presentation and success in turning their technically detailed report into …