ŕŁŕŁÖ±˛ĄĐă

Innovative drone technology proposed by a quartet of South ŕŁŕŁÖ±˛ĄĐă State University mechanical engineering students has lifted them to the finals of NASA contest.

The team was one of eight schools chosen to compete in the finals of the NASA Gateways to Blue Skies Competition at Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, May 20-21. 

While this is the first time SDSU has competed in this NASA contest, the selection continues a run of success that the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering has had in NASA contests in recent years.

Steven Holz, NASA Aeronautics University Innovation assistant project manager and co-chair of the Gateways to Blue Skies judging panel, said, “We are excited to see how each finalist team fleshes out their original concept in their final papers, infographics and presentations.” 

SDSU will compete against entries from Auburn, Boston University, Columbia University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Houston Community College, University of California-Davis and the University of Tulsa.

This year’s Blue Skies theme is “AgAir: Aviation Solutions for Agriculture,” which asked students to research new or improved aviation solutions to support agriculture. The contest goal was purposefully open-ended to give plenty of room for creativity.

That created the biggest challenge for the SDSU team of Nathan Kuehl, Laura Peterson, Keegan Visher and Nick Wolles. “Figuring out what problem affected the most farmers took a lot of time,” said Visher, who, like all his teammates, will earn a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in May.

Consulting farmers to make farming more efficient

To find a project that would be helpful, the students turned to a logical source — farmers themselves. The team participated in a business development training program called I-Corps through the Great Plains Hub and the National Science Foundation, which encourages teams to conduct customer discovery sessions to learn about problems from the people seeking answers.

They contacted about 25 farmers, crop consultants and agronomists in eastern South ŕŁŕŁÖ±˛ĄĐă and southwestern Minnesota. It helps that the fathers of two of the students, Kuehl, of Avoca, Minnesota, and Wolles, of Dell Rapids, are farmers. That gave them an inside line to find out what task an unmanned aerial vehicle could perform to enhance production.

The answer was a drone with sensors allowing it to take soil samples and snip off a leaf to bring it back to the lab for analysis.

Todd Letcher, associate professor in mechanical engineering and the project adviser, said, “We developed a concept that will help producers understand their land and crops better to help with precision application of necessary fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. A soil probe directly collects data from the soil. A tissue-sampling mechanism cuts the top fully grown leaf from a plant and stores it on board to be analyzed in a lab.  

“Both of these methods are currently used to help make better precision agriculture decisions, but both are so time-consuming and difficult for technicians to accomplish that not enough data is collected to truly do precision agriculture at the resolution many farmers want.”

“This project takes a step in the direction of autonomous data collection that can enable much better applications of chemicals and much better resolution for precision agriculture.”

Concept based on future innovation

Peterson, of Fredericksburg, Virginia, said the main use of drones in agriculture today is for spraying and crop monitoring.

Because NASA was looking for technology that could be in place within 10 years, it was important that the project not be too distant from today’s reality, but also something that showed an advance in technology.

That’s where the quick-attach soil sensor comes into play. The analysis produced by the project’s probes aren’t fully accurate, “but we are proposing that 10 years from now the technology will be such that the sensors can produce an accurate analysis,” Peterson said. She added, “Also, we thought that would be more feasible than collecting samples and labeling them for future analysis.”

The engineers don’t need to have every operational detail figured out. They’re selling NASA what they believe is a useful and feasible concept.

To wrap up prototype by May

However, the students do plan to have a functional prototype with them when they fly out to Armstrong Flight Research Center. Kuehl said, “NASA has said there are no brownie points for a building a prototype, but we want to have it anyway.” Peterson added, “Plus, it’s easier to explain our project when we have a prototype.”

Like every entry, the students did produce a two-minute video of their project, including computer animation of the drone in action. 

It can be accessed at: .

At the finals, teams will be tasked with submitting a final paper and an infographic that summarizes the concept as well as making a 20-minute oral presentation to NASA judges and industry experts followed by questions from the panel. 

Letcher said, “I think the team will do great in the finals. They’ve worked hard to develop a concept that is both practical and cutting edge, making it great for the competition. But more importantly, it really helps farmers increase the data available for better decisions, so it will be commercially successful too.”

NASA internships go to winning team

That’s not to say the competition isn’t stiff. Before NASA announced the finalists March 14, the teams viewed videos of other entries. Each member said they were shocked that SDSU was among the finalists. “There were a number of teams that put together a great project. We felt good about what we had done, but we were still very surprised,” said Kuehl, who is the team lead.

Visher, of Excelsior, Minnesota, said, “We’re competing against some big-name schools, and there are some big-name schools that didn’t make finalists.”

The team was guided by graduate student Alex Schaar of Sioux Falls with assistance from graduate student Liam Murray of Omaha, Nebraska.

This is the fourth year for the Gateways to Blue Skies competition. Each team receives $8,000 to cover travel costs to the finals, and members of the winning team earn an internship at NASA. 

Letcher explained, “This is the other half of NASA. Everyone thinks of NASA as space flight, but NASA also looks at the everything that flies and looks down back at the earth.” He said he likes this contest because the themes change widely each year, and an ag theme was well suited for SDSU.

SDSU had two other entries in Blue Skies — one comprised of underclassmen and one that collaborated with South ŕŁŕŁÖ±˛ĄĐă School of Mines.

SDSU also has entries in the RASC-AL (Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage) contest with the finalists expected to be named soon. In 2023, SDSU won its RASC-AL category. In 2024, it was second in its category and third overall. In both years, SDSU took best prototype honors.

In addition, in 2024 SDSU was among six commercial and collegiate finalists in the $1.5 million Break the Ice lunar excavation challenge.