As part of L’Space’s 15-week Mission Concept Academy, I worked with a team of 9 students from across the country to develop Operation Oasis, a preliminary design for a lunar lander mission investigating the behavior of water at the lunar surface.

Designing a space mission requires balancing scientific objectives with technical feasibility, mission constraints, and cost. Our team had a $35 million budget and limited prior experience in several areas of space systems engineering. We needed to research unfamiliar technologies and determine which components could realistically support the mission without exceeding our financial or technical constraints.

I took ownership of financial planning and the mission's outreach program. I developed and maintained the project budget model, researched potential technologies and vendors, and evaluated their costs against our mission requirements.

As the team's primary financial lead, I reviewed proposed instruments and components and helped determine whether they were viable within our budget and specifications. I also contributed to the broader research and documentation that formed the mission's Preliminary Design Report, translating technical findings into clear, structured documentation for review.

Our team completed a full Preliminary Design Report (PDR) for Operation Oasis, which was reviewed by L’Space mentors and instructors. We successfully completed the Mission Concept Academy and delivered the proposed mission under the $35 million budget constraint.

The project gave me hands-on experience with technical research, engineering tradeoffs, cost analysis, technical writing, and interdisciplinary collaboration, while introducing me to the systems-level challenges involved in designing a space mission.