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Pod Innovation Award
Delft Hyperloop, Delft University of Technology (The
Netherlands)
Pod Technical Excellence Award
Badgerloop, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Pod Technical Excellence Award
Hyperloop at Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech
Pod Technical Excellence Award
HyperXite, University of California Irvine
“Congratulations to the finalists and all the student teams
who competed in the first-ever SpaceX Hyperloop Pod
Competition,” said John Sharp, chancellor of The Texas A&M
University System. “I am especially proud of Aerospace
Hyperloop, a finalist representing Texas A&M University
and its world-class engineering program in the next round.”
“World-changing events such as this do not happen often,
so to be able to say one took place at Texas A&M is truly
special,” said Michael K. Young, president of Texas A&M.
“It is our hope that everyone who participated uses the
momentum from this historic meeting of young innovators
to go out into the world and continue to create and innovate.
This weekend’s competition proves the future is in very
good hands with such an inspiring and talented group of
young people, many of whom are right here at Texas A&M.
Congratulations to all the young men and women and their
teams headed to California and that certainly includes
Texas A&M’s Aerospace Hyperloop team.”
“The future of engineering was on display this weekend in
College Station,” said M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor
and dean of Texas A&M Engineering. “We challenge our
students to step outside their comfort zones and approach
engineering problems in novel ways. The young men and
women at this competition definitely accomplished that,
and presented design and technical concepts that were
well beyond anyone’s expectations.”
Technical awards were also awarded to student teams
whose designs displayed outstanding technical merit in
subsystem and design.
The European Data Relay System’s first laser terminal has
reached space aboard its host satellite and is now under
way to its final operating position.
EDRS-A was launched on 29 January as part of the Eutelsat-
9B telecom satellite at 22:20 GMT atop a Proton rocket
from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
EDRS is ESA’s most ambitious telecom programme yet,
taking the form of a public–private partnership between
ESA and Airbus Defence and Space, with Airbus operating
first SpaceDataHighway Laser Relay in Orbit
the service and the DLR German Space Administration
funding the development of the laser terminal.
Dubbed the ‘SpaceDataHighway’, EDRS will revolutionise
satcoms as Europe’s first optical communication network,
capable of relaying user data in near-real time at an
unprecedented 1.8 Gbit/s.
Normally, low-orbiting satellites must come within view of
a ground station before they can send their information
to Earth. EDRS instead collects their information from its
higher, geo-stationary position via laser and immediately
relays it to the ground, dramatically improving access to
time-critical and potentially life-saving data.
ESA, Airbus and DLR will in a few days begin testing EDRS-
A’s general health and performance, working with the EDRS
ground stations in Germany, Belgium and the UK.
Test links to its first customers, the European Commission’s
Copernicus Sentinel satellites, will then be carried out over
several weeks for the service to begin this summer. Data
relay for the International Space Station will start in 2018.
the nRFready Smart Remote 3
EDRS-A liftoff
16 l New-Tech Magazine Europe