SRU students receive NASA grant
NASA can't just buy a piece of equipment needed for a space mission. It has to be specially built.
A group of physics and engineering students at Slippery Rock University received a $25,000 grant to be NASA's supplier of a portable cryogenic atomic force microscope system. All they have to do is build it.
“We are building everything from scratch,” said Sagar Bhandari, assistant professor of physics and engineering at SRU. “We have to design something that can fit in a rocket and is light enough.”
Bhandari is heading up the group of seven undergraduate students building the microscope. He said the project involves almost every aspect of engineering.
The students have to construct a microscope that functions in temperatures as low as minus 340 degrees Fahrenheit, and program it to perform its intended function. What's more, it has to be small and light enough to fit on a spacecraft.
“The idea behind the project is, NASA is sending (a) craft to Mars to find out about soil,” Bhandari said. “There is a limit to how much machinery you can send, because it's super expensive to send even a kilogram from space.”The students involved in the project come mostly from physics and engineering programs at the university, but they each have a job to do.Ashton Bloom, a senior double majoring in physics and engineering from East Berlin, said one of his duties is programming.“It involves a lot of different fields of learning,” Bloom said. “All of us took coding classes, and that helps a lot with background.”Tiffany Jolayemi, a senior industrial and systems engineering major from Murrysville, said she has been working on the construction and testing of the microscope.“We all kind of learn as we go, especially with the mechanical design,” Jolayemi said. “We all learn from each other.”The students are expected to work on the project for up to a year at 20 hours per week. However, Bhandari said the group may complete the microscope by the end of the summer.
Bhandari also said he does not know when or even if the microscope would be used on a space mission. But researchers at NASA can get at least some use out of every grant project, he said.“They're spending money for people to come up with different designs,” he said. “They can learn from these different designs and pick the one that works best.”The students are all hopeful to see the microscope go into space in a few years.Bloom said this kind of project is one reason he wanted to go into physics.“To see it go to another planet would actually be pretty amazing,” he said.
