NASA is on a mission to send humans to Mars in 2030, and a Tampa based group is competing to be a part of that history in the making.

  • Tampa group vying for finalist spot in NASA's satellite contest
  • Team Miles creating a satellite to fly to Mars
  • NASA to select top 3 finalists today

Team Miles, of Tampa, has worked on building a satellite to enter into NASA’s competition for the last two years, and today, the team will find out if it is selected as a top three finalist.

What makes the group unique is that the members are normal people, and they say, win or lose, they hope to inspire others to go after their dreams.

A software developer by day and self-proclaimed physicist by night, Wesley Faler said Team Miles was born at Tampa Hackerspace. The team only has one trained Aerospace Engineer and the rest of the team is made up of people in the software field, along with a teacher and even an artist.

“It’s a dream come true, I tell you. I started as a blacksmith by trade and being able to go send something into space where it’s going to set sail on Stardust is just amazing,” J Kent said.

For the last two and half years, Team Miles has spent every free minutes working on prototypes to create a bread-box sized satellite for the contest.

“It’s got the swimmer pose where it pushes along against the sun to go towards Mars and then once in a while it stands up like a ballerina and twirls and that’s what it does when it shouts back to earth,” Faler explained.

The winning satellite gets a free ride past the moon in fall of 2018 as part of the inaugural voyage of NASA’s space launch system, and today, Team Miles will find out if their satellite will be on that rocket.

Whether they win or lose, they said it’s really all about following an out of this world dream.

“We all need to know that it’s still okay to dream, you can’t stop dreaming. There’s a point to dreaming, dreams do come true,” Faler said.

If Team Miles makes the top three finalist, they’ll have less than two years to raise a couple million dollars to build their satellite to NASA’s standards so that it can fly in the fall of 2018.

While Team Miles is based out of Tampa, it has members across the country.

We will keep you updated and let you know if they are selected as a finalist.