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2026 Winners

Finalist teams, mentors, advisors, judges and STEM professionals gathered at Space Center Houston in Houston, Texas, from July 15-17, 2026, for the NASA ORBIT Pitch Showcase, an event that brought together months of research, collaboration and engineering design.

NASA ORBIT is proud to recognize this year’s winning teams! Watch the recording of this year’s Awards Ceremony below and scroll for more information on these outstanding teams.

ORBIT Space

1st Place

UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO, MAYAGUEZ

PRINCE

UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO

RICO, MAYAGUEZ

Mayaguez, PR

Adrian O. Serrano Arroyo
Chelsea Acevedo Rodriguez
Christopher I. Rodriguez Guevarez
Ian Santiago Carrasquillo
Justin O. Martinez Carlo
Leonardo J. Román Maldonado
Ruben Diaz, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY

2nd Place

COLLEGE OF THE CANYONS Santa Clarita, CA

CARE-D3

COLLEGE OF THE

CANYONS

Santa Clarita, CA

Sophia Cranshaw
Tatiana Torrecampo
Menoa Yousefi, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY

Complementary Use of AI

MEKAH

SANTA ANA

COLLEGE

Santa Ana, CA

Anthony Mendoza
Arthur Alcocer
Kaung Khant
Michael Trang
My Le
Alexander Natale, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY

People's Choice

PRINCE

UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO

RICO, MAYAGUEZ

Mayaguez, PR

Adrian O. Serrano Arroyo
Chelsea Acevedo Rodriguez
Christopher I. Rodriguez Guevarez
Ian Santiago Carrasquillo
Justin O. Martinez Carlo
Leonardo J. Román Maldonado
Ruben Diaz, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY

ORBIT Earth

1st Place

Arizona State University Students

Sol Invictus Engineering

ARIZONA STATE

UNIVERSITY

Tempe, AZ

Anneli Sorensen
Dylan Banhart
Elvis Garcia Segundo
Mikko-Dakota Roberts
Pheona Gabrail
Matthew Peet, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY

2nd Place

Texas A&M University Students

PATCH

TEXAS A&M

UNIVERSITY

College Station, TX

Eladio Zamora Jr.
Lillian Herte
Mohammed Zia Ullah Baig
Raunaq Malhotra
Rushikesh Gandra
Yahya Khan
Elaheh Rahbar, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY

Complementary Use of AI

University of Massachusetts Students

Green Guard Systems

UNIVERSITY OF

MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON

Boston, MA

Alyamman Al-Saad
Elda Ramirez
Oscar Barrera
Ramon Barea
Kiersten Kerby-Patel, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY

People's Choice

Texas A&M University Students

Flip Flops

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS

AT AUSTIN

Austin, TX

Elle Bates
Eva Espinosa Ayala
Keerthi Chandran
Neureka Kundu
Nitya Shah
Piyali Bhattacharya
Ramesh Yerraballi, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY

Integration Bonus

Santa Ana College University Students

MEKAH

SANTA ANA

COLLEGE

Santa Ana, CA

Anthony Mendoza
Arthur Alcocer
Kaung Khant
Michael Trang
My Le
Alexander Natale, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY
Arizona State University Students

Sol Invictus Engineering

ARIZONA STATE

UNIVERSITY

Tempe, AZ

Anneli Sorensen
Dylan Banhart
Elvis Garcia Segundo
Mikko-Dakota Roberts
Pheona Gabrail
Matthew Peet, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY
University of Texas Students

Flip Flops

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS

AT AUSTIN

Austin, TX

Elle Bates
Eva Espinosa Ayala
Keerthi Chandran
Neureka Kundu
Nitya Shah
Piyali Bhattacharya
Ramesh Yerraballi, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY
Texas A&M University Students

Daedalus

TEXAS A&M

UNIVERSITY

College Station, TX

Amogh Kaji
Cody Nguyen
Dhruv Murthy
Matthew Elizalde
Matthew Price
Sara Holden
Matt Elliott, Advisor

PROJECT SUMMARY

PRINCE

PRINCE: Polar Robotic Infrastructure for Network Construction and Expansion

Before humanity can live beyond Earth, it must learn how to build where roads, cranes, and construction crews do not exist. PRINCE, the Polar Robotic Infrastructure for Network Construction and Expansion, turns that challenge into a reusable infrastructure system for the future. Designed by the University of Puerto Rico–Mayagüez for NASA ORBIT 2026, PRINCE uses a reusable robotic construction system to assemble modular towers that support power, communications, navigation, and future lunar operations. As a stepping stone for NASA’s Moon to Mars (M2M) initiative, PRINCE helps establish the infrastructure needed for sustained exploration beyond Earth. Instead of sending a new construction system for every tower, PRINCE reuses the same core hardware, reducing recurring mass and improving scalability. Adapted for Earth, PRINCE Earth can rapidly deploy communication and infrastructure towers after disasters, in remote areas, or where temporary services are needed, pushing exploration and resilience toward the future.

CARE-D3

CARE-D3 (Constraint-Aware Risk Evaluation for Distributed Decision Making)

CARE-D3 is an onboard clinical decision-support system designed to help astronauts make critical medical decisions during long-duration space missions, when communication delays and limited resources make immediate support from Earth impossible. Rather than replacing human judgment, CARE-D3 acts like an intelligent medical teammate, combining physiological measurements, medical history, and changing health trends to build a personalized profile of each astronaut’s health. Instead of relying on population averages, it estimates individualized risk, communicates uncertainty, and recommends whether to monitor, reassess, or escalate care. Although CARE-D3 was designed for astronauts on long-duration missions, the same decision-support approach could strengthen healthcare wherever expertise and resources are limited—in rural clinics, emergency response, and military medicine. Whether supporting an astronaut on the journey to Mars or a patient here on Earth, CARE-D3 is built on one simple principle: healthcare should adapt to the individual, so the person behind the data is never forgotten.

MEKAH

PROJECT THRESHOLD - A Post EVA Environmental and Human Readiness Verification System

What if the most dangerous moment of a mission is not launching from Earth but returning safely from a spacewalk? An astronaut steps back into the habitat. The helmet comes off. The mission continues. Yet no system today verifies both the astronaut and the environment at the exact moment a decision must be made. Team MEKAH created THRESHOLD to change that. THRESHOLD combines Aether and Morpheus into a single post-EVA verification architecture. Aether verifies environmental integrity, detecting contamination, airborne hazards, and environmental uncertainty. Morpheus verifies physiological readiness, assessing whether the astronaut is prepared to safely continue mission activities. Together, they transform an assumed transition into a verified checkpoint. As humanity prepares for Artemis, Mars, and beyond, exploration will depend not only on reaching new worlds but on knowing when it is truly safe to move forward.

Sol Invictus Engineering

NASA-Derived Low-Noise Rotor Technology

As drone delivery and air taxi systems move closer to everyday use, rotor noise remains a major barrier to public acceptance. Sol Invictus Engineering of Arizona State University is adapting NASA-derived rotor technology from U.S. Patent 10,414,485, “A New Twist Makes Rotating Machinery More Efficient and Quieter,” into a propeller blade scaled for drones. By reshaping the twist along the blade, the design reduces the load on the blade tip, the main source of noise, and quiets the propeller without sacrificing performance. In testing, the modified blade was about 2.2–2.7 dB quieter than a standard propeller, with computer simulations confirming the same trends. This has direct applications to delivery drones, air taxis, HVAC, and ventilation, while also having potential for marine propulsion and NASA mission systems. By reducing noise where it is created, this technology turns the loudest barriers today into a better advantage tomorrow.

PATCH

PATCH (Piezoelectric Active Tissue-healing Composite Hybrid)

Chronic wounds such as diabetic foot and ulcers have persisted as a challenge for the healthcare industry. From their prolonged healing time and risk for infection, patients often find themselves facing drastic measures including amputation, debridement, or other surgical interventions. One contributing factor to chronic wound persistence is the disruption of the body’s endogenous bioelectric signaling, inhibiting tissue remodeling during the healing process. Our solution? PATCH it up! The device is a multilayered system that leverages NASA’s polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) technology to generate a continuous voltage when stimulated with body heat or mechanical deformation requiring no external power source. PATCH utilizes three layers with a bioactive ionogel base, PVDF core, and a silicone protective covering. PATCH is a promising self-powered wound dressing with the potential to reduce treatment complexity, improve patient mobility, and potentially support autonomous medical care during future space missions serving as an acute wound therapeutic as well.

Green Guard Systems

Green Guard – A Multi-Tier Intelligent Network Architecture for Smart Farming

By 2050, the world will need to produce an estimated 56% more food while facing shrinking arable land, climate change, and increasing threats from crop disease and pests. Green Guard is a smart farming platform developed by electrical engineering students at the University of Massachusetts Boston for NASA ORBIT’s Earth track to help farmers meet this challenge. The system combines distributed ground sensors, artificial intelligence, and NASA’s Skyvator aerial platform to continuously monitor crop and soil health across entire fields. Machine learning analyzes data from both ground and aerial observations to identify early signs of plant stress, allowing farmers to respond before significant crop losses occur. By making advanced precision agriculture more affordable and accessible, Green Guard aims to improve food security, reduce water and pesticide use, and demonstrate how NASA technologies can create meaningful benefits for communities on Earth and support future space exploration.

Flip Flops

HeartSense

Cardiovascular disease remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, yet there is currently no affordable way to continuously monitor the heart’s mechanical activity outside of a hospital. HeartSense is a lightweight wearable device designed to fill this gap by continuously detecting and recording the subtle mechanical vibrations produced by each heartbeat. Unlike smartwatches and ECG devices that measure pulse or electrical activity, HeartSense captures the heart’s physical motion using a compact chest-mounted motion sensor. The system filters out noise from breathing and movement, then wirelessly streams the heartbeat waveform to a nearby device in real time. Machine learning then enables automatic detection of early cardiac dysfunction. Our team has built and tested a working prototype that successfully detects live heartbeat signals and is now being validated against a commercial monitor. HeartSense supports earlier insight into cardiac changes on Earth and improves astronaut health monitoring in space.

Daedalus

Lunar Drone Design: Triboelectrically Charged Regolith Propulsion

Future lunar bases will rely on tall communication and power structures that require regular inspection and maintenance. Human access to these structures is dangerous, while climbing rovers can damage critical infrastructure. This project proposes an autonomous drone that uses a novel lunar soil-based propulsion system to operate in the Moon’s near-vacuum environment, where traditional air-based propulsion is nonfunctional. This design utilizes the passive contact charging method of triboelectricity, combined with a multi-stage electric field, to accelerate and eject lunar regolith for propulsion. The 3.5 kilogram, 200 Watt powered drone can reach heights of up to 15 meters to inspect structures, capture images, and perform maintenance tasks. The drone enables autonomous tall structure maintenance, supporting long-duration missions and advancing in-situ resource utilization. By demonstrating a controlled form of lunar aerial mobility, this project offers further applications in resource extraction, terrain surveying, and emergency response operations.