UTEP students create tool for NASA, headed to Johnson Space Center

A group of UTEP students will experience the opportunity of a lifetime. The Space Miners are headed to NASA’s Johnson Space Center. They’ll test a device they’ve worked on for months that may one day be used by astronauts themselves.

UTEP’s group is one 18 chosen for this exciting project. The students were selected to be part of NASA’s Micro-g NExT program. It challenges students to work in teams to design and build prototypes of tools to be used by astronauts during spacewalk training.

By 2020, it could be used by NASA astronauts

“It took us three or four full designs to actually get here,” Esteban Salcedo, said.

It’s called a float sample grabber, with adjustments by NASA engineers, it’ll collect rock samples from the surface of an asteroid.

“They’re hoping that once they obtain samples and different materials from these asteroids, they’ll get a lot better understanding of the origins of the actual whole solar system,” UTEP student Michael Torres, said.

In January, the students were given the task by NASA with a strict set of guidelines.

“Tt needs to weigh less than 15 pounds, grab 3 different samples form 3 different sites, all without cross contamination so it should be able to pick up a sample and seal it and contain it,” Salcedo said.

The biggest challenge was figuring out how to collect materials properly.

“It wouldn’t close fully, so we changed it, changes the shape of the jaws and eventually, we go to this one,”Salcedo said.

After five months, they had their finished product: a pin screen device, with steel rods and a plastic handle.

“Ours is obtain the sample and be able to store them and bring them back to space,” Torres said.

Now is where the real test takes place. They’ll test it out NASA’s Nuetral Buoyancy lab. It’s a 6.2 million gallon indoor pool, used to train astronauts spacewalking.

“The astronauts train there in a zero gravity simulated environment.”

If successful, the device will be used by astronauts in future training.

“We think, oh, we’re just trying to get through school, but things turn out,” Torres said.

“The amount that you get out, is just really satisfying,” UTEP student Ember Sikorski said.

“It started here in El Paso, at UTEP.”

The students leave to Houston on Sunday.