NASA RASCAL 2021 Competition

Summary

• Collaborated on a team of 17 to create a proposal for a crewed flyby of Venus within provided budgetary, technological, and timeline constraints.
• Determined the scientific objectives and conducted a mission risk assessment using a probability & impact matrix.
• Developed the technical proposal video by coordinating with subteams and storyboarding and editing the video.

The NASA RASC-AL competition enlists student teams to solve challenges related to human exploration of outer space. For the 2021 competition, our team “RASCAL at University of Washington” took on the task of creating a proposal for a crewed flyby mission of Venus, “Project Vesper”, chosen from several themes presented for the competition.

The requirements for the Venus flyby theme were to “develop a Venus flyby concept that supports a crew of 4 for a mission in the early 2030s. The mission concept should take advantage of having crew in proximity to Venus for low latency science operations and should identify what planetary science payloads could be delivered during the flyby to explore the atmosphere and/or surface of Venus. Consider how a mission to Venus serves as a proving ground for longer-duration human missions to Mars, and how emerging commercial space capabilities support the mission. Mission should be ready to return to Earth no later than December 31, 2034, with an annual budget of no more than $2B/year from 2025-2034.”