Published: Sept. 5, 2014

Two University of Colorado Boulder student aerospace engineering science teams have won prestigious international and national awards for the design of real-world space missions to Mars and the moon.

One CU-Boulder student team placed second in the world in a competition to design the best concept for a two-person manned flyby of Mars mission as inexpensively, safely and simply as possible. The competition, the International Inspiration Mars Student Design Contest sponsored by the Mars Society, required the teams to choose a launch trajectory, a launch vehicle, flight systems and a concept of operations.

The flight system design selected by the CU-Boulder team included environmental control and life support systems, solar flare protection, navigation, communication and re-entry and landing technology for a proposed 2018 mission to Mars. The CU-Boulder proposal -- the Mars Approach Vehicle and Earth Return for Interplanetary Crew, or MAVERIC -- included independent launches of an inflatable cargo module and an inflatable crew module equipped with a re-entry capsule.

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