TU Delft recently won the overall winning title in the first phase of SpaceX's Hyperloop Pod competition, which the aerospace company launched in 2015. Students and independent engineers worldwide were invited to design a human-scale Hyperloop pod, as a way to help accelerate SpaceX's development of a functional Hyperloop prototype.

This past weekend, SpaceX held the first Competition Weekend at their headquarters in Hawthorne, California. After various performance tests, only three student teams were qualified to test their pods on the 1.2 kilometer test tube: TU Delft, the Technical University of Munich, and MIT.

Delft Hyperloop pod at the SpaceX competition in Hawthorne. Photo via TUDelft/Twitter.

Their pod wasn't the fastest one, but TU Delft achieved the highest overall score and won best innovative design. The Technical University of Munich came in second and won the fastest pod award, while MIT placed in third overall and won best safety and reliability.

Speed wasn't the main prize that TU Delft went after, team captain Tim Houter said to NU.nl. “We wanted to deliver an innovative good contribution. That is why we have focused not only on speed, but also in efficiency in the building and on the cost and safety of the capsule," Houter said.

You can learn more about each winning pod design, or watch the video of each team's pod flights below. 

↓ TU Delft - website

Image via Delft Hyperloop. Rendering © INDG.

↓ Technical University of Munich - website

Image via Technical University of Munich.

↓ MIT - website

© MIT

Moving forward, the Hyperloop Competition II is currently scheduled for this summer at SpaceX’s Hyperloop test track. The second competition is open to new student teams interested in competing on the test track, as well as to existing student teams who have already built and tested pods for a chance to refine their designs. It will solely focus on one criterion: maximum speed.