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 …

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 …