HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (KEYT) – A mechanical engineering senior project team from Cal Poly placed first overall at NASA's 2026 Human Lander Challenge competition last month after developing a cold drinking water system for future manned missions to the moon and Mars.
The nationwide competition asked college teams to come up with solutions connected to life support and environmental control systems that currently pose unique challenges to long-term space excursions.
"As NASA continues preparing for sustained lunar exploration and future human missions to Mars, the development of robust, efficient, and reliable life support systems remains a critical focus area," shared Natalie Martinez-Vlasoff, the mission capabilities and risk reduction advanced capabilities integration lead at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsvill, Alabama. "The 2026 student teams demonstrated a strong understanding of the range of design choices for these systems, and how well-considered, systems-level approaches can improve reliability and crew safety for astronauts using future human landing systems. It is encouraging to see students contributing ideas that help make long-duration lunar exploration more achievable."
Cal Poly's winning project, the Peltier-based Hydration Accumulation Terminal (PHAT), is a modular add-on for existing spacecraft water dispensers that supports a thermoelectric cold-water subsystem that doesn't use refrigerants and compressors.
The Peltier effect, first discovered in 1834 by French physicist Jean-Charles-Athanase Peltier, is the name of the phenomenon where heat is transferred between two materials when an electric current passes through them.
The use of electricity in this manner is the crucial understanding used by the team to deliver the project without materials and systems we commonly associate with terrestrial air cooling systems.
The design is intended to support the Artemis program's intent to land astronauts on the lunar surface in 2028 and even longer trips to Mars in the future.
Our moon captured by the Orion spacecraft during the the sixth day of the Artemis I mission. Image courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The local college's team of mechanical engineering students Taehoon Lee, Sabrina Luo, Jenner Mucher, Ethan Pace, Tarsem Pal and Renee Rebolledo were advised by Professer John Chen and coached by lecturer Rick Lasko.
The final round of the late June competition, put on by the National Institute of Aerospace on behalf of the nation's space agency, required teams to submit a technical paper, worth 70 percent of their final score, as well as deliver a 25-minute presentation and take questions from the judges.