MSOE students are out of this world, now literally! Students from Space Raiders, MSOE's Lunabotics student organization on campus, were recently featured on a low-orbit space satellite positioned above Earth. 

The team found the CrunchLabs Satellite Photo Program through the company’s online engineering outreach and thought it would be a fun thing to submit a team photo. Anyone can submit a ‘space selfie’ to be considered by CrunchLabs to be uploaded on SATGUS, a satellite that orbits 300 miles above the Earth. Traveling at 17,000 miles per hour, SATGUS makes a complete trip around the Earth every 90 minutes showcasing selected space selfies.

“It was honestly surreal,” said Mitchell Brust, vice president of the Space Raiders. “Being selected made our whole team feel recognized, and seeing our photo orbiting Earth was a mix of disbelief and excitement. It gave us a ‘wow, this is real’ moment and definitely boosted team morale heading into the rest of the season. It is difficult to tell from the photo, but it is a photo taken above campus. Somewhere underneath the picture of our team is the rest of us, and it feels amazing to represent the team from orbit!”

The Space Raiders are gearing up for a busy spring semester where they will field a robot for the NASA Lunabotics Challenge at the Kennedy Space Center. The team is hoping to earn a top five award this year at the competition. Throughout the academic year, the team works on developing their skills in robotics, automation and systems engineering as they take in new members and work to test and design their lunar robot.

“We’re incredibly grateful for the support we receive from MSOE faculty, the STEM Center and our sponsors,” said Brust. “Opportunities like this satellite photo help spotlight how much passion and effort our team puts in, and we’re excited to represent MSOE at competition this year.”

From left to right: Adeline Gorman, Professor Michael Swedish, John Dunne, Campbell Brock, Jan Kowal, Ruth Dobberpuhl, Garrett Gruetzmacher, Ryan Nguyen, Nach Khambholja, Mitchell Brust, Garrett Voight.