Three MIT teams selected as finalists in NASA’s 2026 RASC-AL competition
Three MIT teams have been selected as finalists in the 2026 NASA Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) Competition, an annual program that fuels innovation in aerospace systems concepts, analogs, and technology prototyping by engaging universities and colleges. Each finalist team will compete at the RASC-AL Competition Forum in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
This is the first time that three MIT teams have been selected as RASC-AL finalists in one competition.
This year’s teams formed in fall 2025, supported and mentored by experienced students and research staff affiliated with the MIT Space Resources Workshop (SRW), who help teams apply systems engineering principles and balance creativity with realism in their designs. AeroAstro-based teams are frequent participants, finalists, and winners in NASA’s RASC-AL competition. Since its founding in 2017, SRW student teams have earned more than 20 awards from NASA, IEEE, and the Mars Society. Beyond competitions, SRW mentors support students in publishing their work, traveling to conferences, building prototypes, and leading competition teams.
About the teams and projects:
MELIORA: Mars Exploration Layered Infrastructure for Operations, Research, and Advancement is a finalist in Theme 1: Communications, Position, Navigation, and Timing (CPNT) Architectures for Mars Surface Operations. MELIORA proposes a robust, high-data-rate connection between Earth and Mars to support future human missions. The team is co-led by SDM Fellow Clayton Lieberman, SDM Fellow Katiyayni Balachandran, AeroAstro and EECS undergraduate student Ekaterina Tiukhtikova, and AeroAstro graduate student Celvi Lisy.
Theme 1 focuses on designing CPNT architectures for the Martian surface. Proposals must account for systems that arrive and operate at different times, including landers, rovers, habitats, and astronauts, each with distinct requirements for bandwidth, positioning accuracy, and timing.
ECLIPSE: Exploration-Class Lunar Integrated Power SystEm, is a finalist in Theme 2: Lunar Surface Power and Power Management and Distribution (PMAD) Architectures. ECLIPSE proposes a lunar surface power system for the future Moon Base. The team is led by AeroAstro graduate student Patrick Riley and Nuclear Science & Engineering graduate student Taylor Hampson.
Theme 2 centers on how energy is generated, stored, and distributed on the lunar surface. Teams are tasked with creating integrated power systems capable of supporting a wide range of operations at the lunar south pole, both now and in future missions.
CHEESEBURGER: CLPS-enabled Highly-autonomous End-to-End isru-System Evaluations to Build Understanding and Resilient Growth by Experimenting with Regolith, is a finalist in Theme 4: Lunar Technology Demonstrations Leveraging Common Infrastructure. CHEESEBURGER is not in fact about lunar snacking, but a proposal for lunar surface manufacturing technology experiments using lunar regolith. The team is led by AeroAstro graduate student Cesar Meza and AeroAstro undergraduate senior Elizabeth Romero.
Theme 4 emphasizes coordinated technology demonstrations that build on one another over time. Teams design a series of lunar surface experiments that share infrastructure and align with NASA’s Moon to Mars Lunar Infrastructure objectives, using multiple CLPS-class payloads to advance key capabilities.
The teams are advised and supervised by AeroAstro research scientist George Lordos, Prof. Olivier de Weck, and Prof. Jeffrey Hoffman.
