WEST LAFAYETTE – The 2026 Neil Armstrong Space Prize was announced Tuesday (April 21) at Purdue University, heralding the Falcon 9 Booster Landing Team as the inaugural winner of the Neil Armstrong Space Prize for cutting-edge work on the Falcon 9 reusable two-stage rocket system.
Click here to view the presentation.
The team is the first recipient of the international prize recognizing excellence over the past 10 years in space discovery, innovation, and human achievement. This transformative prize leverages Purdue’s unparalleled space heritage, having produced numerous astronauts and pioneering aerospace education and research.
The five-member team was nominated for their work in developing the Falcon 9 vertical landing capability, fundamentally changing the launch vehicle landscape. The SpaceX recipients are:
- Lars Blackmore, senior principal Mars landing engineer
- Shana Diez, senior director, Starship reliability
- Jon Edwards, senior vice president of Falcon and Dragon projects
- Yoshi Kuwata, principal guidance, navigation, and control engineer
- Eduardo Velazquez, director, Crew Starship engineering
The selection of the research team for the honor was announced during an event in the Herman and Heddy Kurz Atrium at Purdue’s Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering. Attendees at the announcement event watched via livestream as the Neil Armstrong Space Prize recipients were surprised by the news of receiving the award. Amit Kshatriya, NASA associate administrator, and other leaders participated in the event.
“Purdue alumnus Neil Armstrong took that small step and giant leap on the face of the moon in 1969,” Purdue President Mung Chiang said. “Now as the dawn of space economy and the new frontier of human space exploration inspire us all, the Neil Armstrong Space Prize will recognize the most impactful steps and leaps each year.”
The inaugural Neil Armstrong Space Prize will be formally awarded in September during a ceremony in Washington, D.C., aligning with the America250 celebration and connecting Purdue’s space leadership with this historic national milestone.
The eponymous award honors aerospace pioneer and Purdue graduate Neil Armstrong (BS aeronautical engineering ’55, honorary doctorate ’70), who led the team of three American astronauts who were the first to land on the moon on July 20, 1969.
Dan Dumbacher, chair of the Neil Armstrong Space Prize selection committee, said Falcon 9 last year had 164 launches, with one booster being used more than 30 times.
“The reusability resulting from vertical landing has been key in reducing the cost of launching payloads,” Dumbacher said. “This team made it happen.”
The research team was chosen from a long list of impressive nominees.
“In the end, the deciding factor was what we felt like was the team’s impact on humanity,” said Dumbacher, a professor of engineering practice in Purdue’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “Their work has had a very clear impact and a very visible impact.”
The SpaceX team was honored in the award’s Innovation category. Three categories of awards fall under the Neil Armstrong Space Prize, and each year, one or more of these categories might be awarded:
- Innovation — for space technologies that benefit humanity
- Discovery — for breakthroughs that have most expanded the frontiers of human knowledge
- Human Achievement — for pioneering accomplishment in space that most benefited humanity
Dumbacher said the Neil Armstrong Space Prize stretches internationally across the major areas of the modern space industry — including government, defense, and commercial aspects — and the goals set by each area. Nominees were received in all three categories under the Space Prize. Dumbacher also wanted to thank BryceTech for its support in the process development.
Nominations received in 2025 were extensively reviewed and narrowed down to six finalists in January. The advisory committee is led by Kathleen Howell, Purdue’s Hsu Lo Distinguished Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, with Henry Yang, chancellor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the late George Smoot III, formerly of the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The advisory committee joined Dumbacher and selection committee members Jim Free, an aerospace executive; Kathryn Lueders, a commercial space consultant and retired NASA Human Exploration and Space Operations associate administrator; Rob Meyerson, CEO and co-founder of Interlune Corp. and former president of Blue Origin; and Thomas Zurbuchen, a Swiss-American astrophysicist and ETH Zurich space director, to thoroughly revisit and discuss each nomination.
A final nominee recommendation was passed along to Chiang and Arvind Raman, the John A. Edwardson Dean of the College of Engineering, in March.
Purdue leads all public institutions of higher learning in the number of alumni who have entered public and commercial space programs. Academic, government, and industrial partnerships — including with NASA research centers and leading space economy industries — serve as a university hallmark with collaborative efforts that have resulted in advances in hypersonics, advanced propulsion systems, in-space manufacturing, and lunar and planetary surface mobility, which are critical to space discovery, economic opportunity, and global security.
Purdue will send five Boilermakers on a research journey into space aboard a Virgin Galactic suborbital flight, dubbed Purdue 1, in 2027. This groundbreaking flight will include teaching and real-time research on board, making Purdue the first university to operate in space.
Known as the Cradle of Astronauts, Purdue has 30 alumni who have flown in space or been selected as NASA astronaut candidates.
