The six-member team, known as Star Maker, traveled to Houston in July to pitch at NASA’s first-ever ORBIT Challenge, a student competition designed to crowdsource fresh ideas for the agency’s exploration goals. The competition drew hundreds of university entries nationwide, from which 20 teams were selected as finalists across two tracks. Star Maker competed in the Space Track and walked away with a $15,000 prize for its Orbital Solar Energy Harvesting Swarm, or OSEHS, a constellation of autonomous satellites that would collect solar energy in space and relay it to receivers on the lunar surface using microwave beams. The concept deliberately moves the power source off the Moon entirely, sidestepping the two-week darkness problem that makes surface solar power untenable at the pole.

Tatiana Mejia, an NJIT mechanical engineering student in the class of 2027 who conceived the project, argues that the idea sounds more futuristic than it actually is. In her view, the individual pieces of the system already exist in some form, and the real challenge lies in pushing them forward and integrating them at scale. She points to swarm robotics as the key enabling technology, noting that a distributed swarm can complete its mission even when individual units fail. In the space environment, she emphasizes, that kind of resilience is not a luxury but a requirement, because a single fault can endanger everyone involved. It is a philosophy she knows well: Mejia previously developed a swarm robotics concept that earned a $10,000 NASA grant, and she had spent three years working in NJIT’s Swissler Innovative Robotics Lab before the lunar power idea began taking shape in fall 2025.

The team assembled organically around that seed of an idea. Mejia began working with fellow NJIT mechanical engineering student Natalie Kiwanian and Jennifer Salto, a mechanical engineering student at Stevens Institute of Technology, after Salto discovered the newly announced ORBIT Challenge. The trio then recruited specialists to fill the technical gaps. Kevin Gutama, an NJIT electrical engineering alumnus now working at GE Aerospace, took on power distribution. KesUranNu Baylor, an NJIT physics student with orbital mechanics experience from a NASA Goddard internship, handled the trajectories. Andrea Yanez Soto, also from NJIT, modeled how the swarm would communicate. The result was an unusually complete undergraduate team, pairing mechanical, electrical and physics expertise with hands-on robotics experience.

Their proposed architecture is ambitious in scale. The team envisions a network of roughly 1,100 autonomous satellites, each about six feet wide, operating in an agile formation. Some units would orbit closer to the Sun, harvesting sunlight where the solar flux is far more intense than in Earth’s neighborhood, while others would relay that collected energy inward, beaming it by microwave to receivers on the lunar surface to provide continuous power regardless of the Moon’s day-night cycle. The physics behind the choice of location is straightforward: capturing even a tiny fraction of the Sun’s raw output dwarfs humanity’s entire energy consumption. As Mejia puts it, harnessing just 0.01 percent of the Sun’s raw power would exceed current global energy demands by a factor of roughly two billion.

Crucially, the team did not stop at concept sketches. They built simulations and physical prototypes to demonstrate that their swarm could survive the harsh realities of deep space operations. In one simulation, 12 units orbiting the Sun in a formation the team describes as a pearl necklace showed how the constellation could recover from individual satellite failures without any intervention from Earth, redistributing tasks among the surviving units. Gutama notes that much of this work went beyond what NASA actually required of entrants. The simulation, the prototypes and the elaborate presentation display were all self-imposed efforts, driven by the team’s desire to show that they could genuinely compete and that their vision was technically grounded rather than merely aspirational.

The run-up to the competition tested the team’s endurance as much as its engineering. The day before their flight to Houston, members were at NJIT past midnight applying final touches to their materials, and Kiwanian recalls going almost two days without sleep. Once at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the finalists spent a week touring the facilities and meeting space scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs before presentation day arrived. At the Pitch Showcase on the final day, each team had 15 minutes to present everything they had built since February. Kiwanian remembers Baylor explaining how the swarm could use the gravity of Venus to bring the constellation closer to the Sun, a gravitational assist maneuver of the kind mission designers have used for decades to reshape spacecraft orbits without expending propellant. Midway through the explanation, she noticed the chief scientist of the International Space Station Program nodding along, a moment she took as a very good sign.

For Baylor, the experience was as much about personal and intellectual growth as it was about the prize. He describes how his applied understanding of everything he had learned at NJIT, particularly how physical bodies move in space, accelerated dramatically through the project, and how bringing the work to NASA and discussing it with the people there made him feel he had truly grown as a physicist. That sense of validation extended to the judging panel itself. Mejia recalls that the judges, who ranged from JPMorgan representatives to NASA engineers, encouraged the team not to treat OSEHS as just a paper concept for the agency but to actually make it happen after the competition. That advice appears to have landed.

Back from Houston, the six members split the $15,000 prize evenly, $2,500 apiece, but the project is far from over. Star Maker intends to turn OSEHS into a startup venture, and interestingly, the team’s first market may not be the Moon at all. Kiwanian suggests the technology could help data center developers power new sites by reducing their burden on the electrical grid, addressing the enormous and rapidly growing energy appetite of generative artificial intelligence. The team is applying to the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program for customer discovery training and has set its sights on NASA TechLeap, a prize program that could provide up to $500,000 to build and test actual hardware. Mejia says the ORBIT Challenge made the idea real for the team, and the next step is raising money to create a prototype and launch the startup.

Behind the technical ambition lies a broader motivation that the team returns to repeatedly. For Mejia, space exploration has always been about looking at the big picture, not continents and not skin color, but bringing humanity together. She argues that if humanity wants to avoid exhausting Earth’s resources, collaboration as one species is essential, and that conviction is what continues to inspire the team’s work together. Whether OSEHS satellites eventually beam power across cislunar space or first help terrestrial data centers lighten their load on the grid, the Star Maker team has demonstrated something that competitions like the ORBIT Challenge were designed to find: a bold idea, validated by simulation and prototype, carried forward by students determined to see it through from concept to hardware.

Subject of Research: A student-designed orbital solar energy harvesting satellite swarm for supplying continuous microwave-beamed power to a lunar base

Article Title: NJIT students’ plan to power the moon with swarm robots wins NASA prize

Article References: NJIT students’ plan to power the moon with swarm robots wins NASA prize. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: NASA ORBIT Challenge, lunar South Pole, space solar power, swarm robotics, microwave power beaming, NJIT, satellite constellation, orbital mechanics, lunar base power, OSEHS, NASA TechLeap, student aerospace competition

After a successful journey to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, PUNCH’s four suitcase-sized satellites have reached their final Earth-side destination before embarking on an ambitious journey into polar orbit. The collaborative launch, shared with NASA’s SPHEREx mission, is scheduled for late February 2025, marking a significant milestone in heliophysics. With a strategic deployment along the day-night line, these satellites are designed to remain in sunlight, ensuring optimal operational conditions for their scientific instruments.

Principal Investigator Dr. Craig DeForest, leading the PUNCH mission from SwRI’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division, emphasized the significance of this mission. PUNCH aims to bridge the understanding of two crucial solar phenomena: the solar corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun visible during eclipses, and the solar wind—the stream of charged particles extending throughout the solar system. This real-time measurement of the solar environment will enhance our predictive capabilities regarding solar weather events and their potential impacts on Earth.

As the constellation prepares for launch, it is equipped with an array of sophisticated instruments designed to capture unprecedented data. Three of the satellites will feature Wide Field Imagers (WFIs), developed to provide detailed heliospheric imagery from notable distances away from the Sun. These innovative instruments utilize specialized baffles and an artificial horizon to filter out overwhelming brightness from the Sun, akin to aiming a telescope at a distant star without being blinded by its light.

The significance of the WFIs lies in their ability to detect faint light emitted by the solar corona and the solar wind. Solar phenomena, such as coronal mass ejections, have far-reaching effects on space weather and can disrupt satellite communications and power grids on Earth. By gaining insight into these events, scientists can better forecast their trajectories and impacts, enhancing our preparedness for solar storms.

In addition to the WFIs, PUNCH includes a fourth satellite equipped with a Narrow Field Imager—a sophisticated coronagraph created by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. This instrument continuously captures detailed images of the solar corona, providing vital information on the dynamics and structure of this elusive solar atmosphere. The combined efforts of these four spacecraft will generate a wealth of data, synchronizing their observations to function as a singular, virtual instrument with a comprehensive field of view.

To make sense of the polarized light reflected off of solar particles, each PUNCH satellite features advanced imaging capabilities. These include a camera system developed by RAL Space, which captures images through three distinct polarizing filters. This innovative technique allows scientists to construct a three-dimensional map of solar phenomena within the corona and throughout the inner solar system.

The notion of polarized light aligns perfectly with ambient phenomena such as sunlight scattering. As sunlight interacts with charged particles in the solar wind, it becomes polarized, granting scientists insight into the characteristics and movement of the corona. The ability to analyze these polarized light patterns marks a significant improvement over traditional imaging methods that lack measurements for three-dimensional motion. With PUNCH’s innovative approach, researchers stand to enhance their understanding of how these solar features behave and evolve over time.

The path to this launch has not been without challenges. PUNCH Project Manager Ronnie Killough noted the resilience of the team in overcoming late-breaking hurdles during the mission’s integration and environmental testing phases. Each member of the team demonstrated exceptional adaptability, ensuring that the spacecraft were ready for the rigors of launch and the harsh conditions of space. The anticipation surrounding the launch only amplifies the excitement for the data that will soon flow back to Earth.

PUNCH is part of NASA’s Small Explorers (SMEX) program, which promotes innovative scientific missions that seek to answer fundamental questions about space and solar phenomena. SwRI’s leadership in the PUNCH mission serves as a testament to its commitment to advancing heliophysics and astrophysics research through innovative approaches. Collaborating with esteemed partners such as the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and RAL Space highlights the collective effort required to realize such ambitious scientific goals.

As the countdown to launch continues, the PUNCH mission promises to deliver profound advancements in our understanding of the Sun’s behavior, thereby enhancing our predictive capabilities regarding solar weather and its associated effects on terrestrial systems. As we seek to untangle the complexities of the solar system and its interactions, PUNCH stands poised to illuminate the path ahead, revolutionizing our approach to solar dynamics and offering fresh insights into the forces that shape our cosmic neighborhood.

For those eager to learn more about this exciting mission and the scientific endeavors it encompasses, further information can be found on the official website dedicated to PUNCH and its various components. The opportunity to contribute to the study of solar phenomena marks a thrilling chapter in the field of space science, and with PUNCH, we stand on the brink of discovery.

Subject of Research: Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH)
Article Title: PUNCH Mission Prepares for Launch: A New Chapter in Solar Exploration
News Publication Date: January 22, 2025
Web References: https://www.swri.org/heliophysics
References: N/A
Image Credits: USSF 30th Space Wing/Alex Valdez

Keywords

: Solar research, PUNCH mission, heliophysics, solar corona, solar wind, spacecraft, NASA, space weather, coronal mass ejections, imaging technology, scientific collaboration, cosmic phenomena.