An ASU student team won the Systems Engineering prize in NASA’s recent 2024 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-Changing, or BIG,  Idea Challenge, which presents teams with tough engineering design challenges. The ASU squad was awarded for its inflatable lunar landing pad system designed to deflect exhaust gasses from lunar landers to reduce disturbances caused by Moon dust during spacecraft landings. NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate sponsors the challenge managed by the National Institute of Aerospace and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Team presentations, technical papers and digital posters are on the BIG Idea website. Fulton Schools mechanical engineering student Connor Owens and electrical engineering graduate student Sarwan Shah were among the ASU competitors.