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Space |
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NASA says students have the tools to help with station repairs
NASA and two of its contractors, Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc. and Boeing Co., want a group of high school students in Huntsville to help train astronauts to make repairs to the International Space Station.
At a news conference Thursday at the Huntsville Center for Technology, Teledyne Brown engineer Jason Norwood said students there will develop a piece of hardware that would replicate an experiment rack on the space station.
The school is designing the equipment as part of a program called High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware, designed for students to study and create hardware with technical oversight. The program's goal is to inspire young people to pursue careers that advance NASA's goals.
Program manager Bob Zeek said about 20 students in grades 10-12 will use pre-engineering skills to create a computerized design of the model, which eventually will be built into a functioning model that would allow students to practice with the moving parts.
Zeek said the model is fascinating because it's a real-world application.
"They'll be fabricating a product that will be used in our space station for actual astronaut crew training," he said.
Eddie Turner, principal at the school, said the tech-minded students are thrilled to tackle the project in time for the launch.
"I believe this is the first time a request like this has been made of a high school," he said, "and we are very excited about it."
Zeek said the students may also be in for a perk: talking with astronauts in space from Marshall Space Flight Center and sending them instructions by radio if there's a hang-up in fixing the valve.
The rack, about the same shape but several feet taller and wider than a refrigerator, contains 10 compartments where scientific experiments are conducted.
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