Virginia Tech undergraduate team takes third at 2026 NASA RASC-AL forum
Competition was fierce but Virginia Tech rose to the challenge, placing third at the 2026 NASA Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts — Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) forum in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
NASA regularly seeks out innovative new concepts to improve humans’ ability to operate on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The annual RASC-AL forum bridges the gap between academia and the aerospace industry by empowering undergraduate and graduate students to apply their classroom knowledge to real-world challenges in space exploration.
A team of Virginia Tech aerospace engineering students was among the fourteen teams from across the country that attended the multi-day forum in June. Teams gave formal presentations outlining their mission architectures, technology solutions, and supporting analysis. These discussions provided students with real-time engineering feedback, exposing them to the rigor and scrutiny applied to human spaceflight concepts under development within the agency.
Virginia Tech’s project, the Mars Pylon Network, earned third place overall, edged out by two teams from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mars Pylon Network
The Mars Pylon Network (MPN) was designed in response to one of the RASC-AL forum’s themes: “Communications, Position, Navigation, and Time Architectures for Mars Surface Operations.”
The MPN is a system concept designed to support sustained human operations on the Martian surface by supplying vital resources and infrastructure. The primary mission of the network is to provide reliable communications, power management, and position, navigation, and timing services for astronauts and robotic rovers.
The team’s design relies on a multi-spacecraft architecture that operates in tandem with deployed physical pylons on Mars.
Teammates on the Mars Pylon Network project include spring 2026 graduates Joshua Berube, Nathan Castonguay, Ben Daniel, Kyle DeHoust, Luke Dinicola, Tyler Duran, River Hamme, Hayden Milic, Luca Miftode, Drew Mestas, Frank Naccarato, Anthony Ryder, and Samuel Smith.
A streak of strong performances
Virginia Tech has a long history of performing well at the RASC-AL forum, under the direction of Kevin Shinpaugh, collegiate professor of aerospace and ocean engineering. The Mars Pylon Network team was formed within the space engineering track of the year-long senior capstone design course.
“RASC‑AL pushes students to think like practicing aerospace engineers, and this year’s forum was especially competitive,” said Shinpaugh. “To place third among a mix of graduate and undergraduate teams is an extraordinary accomplishment. What impressed me most was not just the quality of the Mars Pylon Network design, but the professionalism, resilience, and curiosity our students showed throughout the process. They acted quickly on feedback from industry mentors and me.”
