Lehigh University Space Initiative

The Lehigh University Space Initiative (LUSI) spreads a passion for space among Lehigh students by giving them career-ready skills through interdisciplinary engineering projects. Our 45 members, from mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering, computer science, and the life sciences, build two flagship projects.

Our Mars rover competes in the University Rover Challenge, an international competition run by The Mars Society. After falling just short of the finals last year, we are rebuilding the rover with a new suspension, a more efficient 24V power system, a more dexterous robotic arm, and our first scout drone, aiming for the 2027 finals in Utah.

Our CubeSat team's first mission concept, OSPREY, a satellite designed to measure ocean plastic pollution from orbit, was accepted into the Air Force Research Laboratory's University Nanosatellite Program Mission Concept Program. This year the team is applying to the CanSat competition, where students design a can-sized practice satellite, while finishing Lehigh's first amateur satellite ground station.

Every gift goes into hardware our students design, build, and test themselves:
$150 covers a season of fasteners for both teams
$200 buys parts for our solar panel and benchtop power supply prototypes
$300 buys a long-range antenna so the rover can talk to its base station
$400 funds the rotary joint for our robotic arm's new end effector
$800 covers fabrication of our CubeSat attitude control prototype

The skills behind that hardware go further. Two of our CubeSat leads earned University Nanosatellite Program internships this summer, and LUSI alumni now work at Apple, Boeing, Raytheon, SpaceX, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.