GW STUDENTS WIN NASA DESIGN COMPETITION 

NASA to Incorporate Student Design into Future Mars Mission

Washington  - A team of students at The George Washington University's Joint Institute for the Advancement of Flight Sciences in Hampton, Virginia, won top prize in NASA's 2001 MarsPort Engineering Design Competition.  The four students and two faculty advisors designed a storage facility that will be essential to future manned missions to Mars.  NASA plans to incorporate the students' blueprint for the MarsPort Cryogenics and Consumables Station (MCCS) into the complex infrastructure needed to launch spacecraft from the Martian surface.  

"It was a great experience and I learned many things," said Paul Escalera, a graduate student in aeronautics.  "It was more work than I expected, but I would definitely do it again."  

GW's group also included graduate students Alicia Dwyer, Jill Hanna and Corey Hernandez and faculty advisors Robert Tolson and Paul Cooper.  The MarsPort competition was co-sponsored by the Florida Space Grant Consortium and the Texas Space Grant Consortium.  

The MCCS produces and holds water, oxygen and methane on the surface of Mars, eliminating the need for astronauts to bring the elements from earth.  Astronauts consume the water and oxygen, and then use the oxygen and methane as launch propellants when the mission is completed.

GW beat out six other student groups from Cornell University, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Tennessee and the University of Wisconsin.  GW was awarded first place in the competition during a May conference at the Kennedy Space Center.  The GW team spent nine months designing the station which consists of an oxygen-producing device, the aluminum alloy storage cylinders and a launching pad for the spacecraft that will return the astronauts to earth.  

"I was most proud of the professionalism of the GW students," said faculty advisor Tolson.  "Our students have been involved in real-life missions before, and they take these things seriously.  That was a major distinction between GW and the other presentations."

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Langley Research Center joined with GW's School of Engineering and Applied Science in 1971 to create the Joint Institute for the Advancement of Flight Sciences. The institute's purpose is to increase the nation's research and engineering capabilities in the broad areas of aeronautics and astronautics. Located at the NASA-Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the institute offers graduate courses for the advanced training of students and professional engineers. JIAFS also serves to bring together researchers and scholars for the exchange of ideas and findings in flight sciences.

Located four blocks from the White House, The George Washington University was created by an Act of Congress in 1821. Today, GW is the largest institution of higher education in the nation's capital. The University offers comprehensive programs of undergraduate and graduate liberal arts study as well as degree programs in medicine, law, engineering, education, business/public management and international affairs. Each year, GW enrolls a diverse population of 20,000 undergraduates, graduate and professional students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and 120 countries.

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