The Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab, or PSTDL, a group of space-obsessed
graduate and undergraduate students at Michigan Tech who compete in a variety of NASA
Centennial Challenges. NASA awarded the PSTDL team $400,000 and named them one of
four finalists in the Watts on the Moon Challenge.
In NASA's Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge in 2020,
the PSTDL team won the top prize—the Artemis Award—for the Tethered permanently-shadowed
Region Explorer rover, nicknamed T-REX. PSTDL also advanced to the final stage of
NASA's Break the Ice Challenge with a project designed to excavate, refine, and transport
water-ice in the polar regions of the moon.
