Kris Drozd Leads CubeSat Team to $500 Prize at Astrodynamics Conference

Kris Drozd, a systems and industrial engineering doctoral student, led a team of students from the UA and Politecnico di Milano to a third-place win this summer at the Astrodynamics Specialist Conference.

"The competition was very tough, and the students had to submit a full paper and give a presentation to judges from Planetary Resources Inc,, a private company invested in mining near-Earth asteroids," said Roberto Furfaro, associate professor in the Systems and Industrial Engineering Department.

With the help of Furfaro and his fellow adviser, Francesco Topputo of the Politecnico di Milano, the team won a $500 prize for its design of BEBOP, a cubesat (miniaturized satellite) for investigating asteroids.