Rack to the Future: Design of Payload Racks to Support Future Habitation Platform and Exploration Missions: Moon to Mars Exploration Systems and Habitat (M2M X-Hab) 2025 Academic Innovation Challenge

NASA’s M2M X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge is an annual competition that invites university students to design and develop innovative space habitat technologies and systems that align with NASA’s goals in exploration. University teams propose and develop projects that are judged on technical merit, academic involvement, and outreach. Under the guidance of NASA experts, student led teams collaborate over several months to design and develop solutions that address the problems outlined in their project. The X-Hab challenge offers students a unique opportunity in hands on experience in real world engineering development. Our team collaborated with NASA to design and develop a payload rack to support future habitation platforms and their exploration missions. This project centered around innovation to-wards a design to handle the primary engineering challenge of adaptability in various gravitational conditions.