Engineering students at the University of South Florida are in a national competition headed by NASA. Their mission is to create a tool to help astronauts collect asteroid samples, and it’s proven to be a success.
Out of more than 100 universities that applied to participate in this challenge, only 19 groups were selected. Three came from USF. The students spent a week of their summer working at the NASA Space Center.
“Getting to see all of the science that’s there and all of the knowledge and incredible people, it was just fantastic,” said Brittany Mott, a senior industrial engineering student at USF.
The three teams worked alongside actual astronauts and NASA scientists testing out tools they designed and created to retrieve rock samples from asteroids in space. One of the teams created a device that breaks off a chip of rock from an asteroid to provide a sample size of rock. The other team designed a sample grabber that’s triggered by an astronaut's hand, allowing them to pick up a small sample of an asteroid.
“We had many other requirements that NASA had asked of us to include in the device, and we had to make sure we fit each of those very carefully,” said Mott.
Many hours went into creating the devices, and students say all the work was worth it, getting to work alongside their idols.
“I always dreamed of it," said Tyler Isahcs, a senior mechanical engineering student. "I’ve followed NASA since I was a boy, but to be able to actually experience it and apply engineering problems we learn in school every day, the concepts, to a real world application with NASA, it’s beyond my belief almost."