Winners Announced in NASA’s 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition

SDSU team takes home big win in NASA competition

May 22, 2025 Four mechanical engineering students from South Dakota State University found a way to make drones more useful for farmers and won a prestigious NASA contest in the process. The first-place SDSU team was one of eight finalists in NASA’s Gateways to Blue Skies contest, which this year had a theme of AgAir: Aviation Solutions for Agriculture. Teams were instructed to conceptualize novel aviation systems that can be applied to agricult…

Winners Announced in NASA’s 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition

3 min readPreparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) A team from South Dakota State University with their project, “Soil Testing and Plant Leaf Extraction Drone,” took first place at the 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Forum held May 20-21 in Palmdale, California. Advisor Todd Lechter, left, along with team members Nick Wolles, Keegan Visher, Nathan Kuehl and Laura Peterson, and graduate advisor Allea Klauenberg, right, acc…