YSU Moon Miners earn third place in national robotics competition

Youngstown State University’s Lunabotics team, the Moon Miners, earned third place overall in the 2025 NASA Lunabotics Challenge, a prestigious national engineering competition that tasks college teams with designing autonomous robots capable of mining simulated lunar soil.

In addition to placing third overall, the Moon Miners also earned:

• Third Place in Autonomy, receiving a $250 award and plaque
• Third Place in Construction, earning an additional $250 award and plaque

The team scored more than 600 total points and brought home a trophy, demonstrating exceptional performance across all categories of the challenge.

While many teams fielded 15 to 30 students from mechanical, electrical, computer science and graduate programs, often supported by budgets between $25,000 and $30,000 and backed by sponsors like Caterpillar, Boeing, Collins Aerospace and Vermeer—YSU’s team consisted of just six senior electrical engineering students and one sophomore, working with a budget of $5,500.

Instead of using advanced software like the Robot Operating System (ROS), commonly deployed by teams and even NASA’s own rovers, the Moon Miners constructed their robot using a $5 Arduino microcontroller and code written in a single day by students Ayomide Hector Olukoya and Austin Zeigler.

Despite the constraints, YSU outperformed many larger and better-funded teams, including Iowa State University, the back-to-back Lunabotics champions in 2023 and 2024.

The team’s innovative approach and efficient design drew attention from NASA, MIT, Collins Aerospace, Raytheon and Pratt & Whitney, all of whom observed the competition live.

The team’s success reflects the strength of YSU’s engineering curriculum and the creativity, resilience and technical excellence of its students, placing them among the most competitive young engineers in the country.