NASA awards engineering grant
By Liz O'Brien
Outer space may seem impossibly far away to the average human, but for some Santa Clara students, it's only as far as the engineering lab on campus. Thanks to NASA Ames, a novel type of small satellite developed by Santa Clara students is on schedule to launch into space this summer.
The engineering department has been awarded a $2.7 million grant from NASA Ames Research Center, an aeronautics and robotics research center located in Silicon Valley. The three-year grant administered in October will allow students and faculty involved in small spacecraft projects on campus to further their research and launch additional satellites.
The grant will be used by the university's Robotic Systems Laboratory, which operates out of the engineering department under the guidance of mechanical engineering professor Chris Kitts.
Along with Kitts, several part-time staff members, about a dozen graduate students and 30-plus undergraduates work in the RSL on research projects in the fields of air, land, sea and space.
"We focus on building systems that can be used for either scientific research or engineering research," said Mike Rasay, part-time RSL staff member and doctorate student in the engineering department.
The project the NASA Ames grant will enable is an extension of last year's launch of GeneSat-1, a small satellite whose command and control system was designed by Santa Clara students. The RSL is currently collaborating with NASA Ames to develop another small satellite with a platform the size of a breadbox named PharmaSat, which will monitor the growth of biology in space.
"The initiative is to eventually understand how the space environment impacts the human body," said Rasay.
Unlike most satellites, GeneSat and PharmaSat fit autonomous "laboratories" on their small platforms, which allows for reduced development and deployment costs, as well as the ability to read its results as they are recorded in real time, said Rasay. After it passes a technological demonstration by SpaceX in late spring, PharmaSat's official launch is scheduled for the summer.
Since the lab's inception in 1998, its focus has centered around engineering students' senior design projects. The RSL provides an environment for students to design, test, operate and manage projects.
"Hours aren't really specified, but sometimes we were putting in 40 or more hours in the lab in a week," said John Shepard, a lab member and second year graduate student earning his master's degree in mechanical engineering.
Over the life of the RSL, members have been developing underwater remotely operated vehicles, which lab members test at Lake Tahoe. According to Rasay, Santa Clara's are the most powerful shallow-water ROVs of their kind.
"Scientists are kind of lining up to be able to use this thing, because it's not something that has really been done before by either universities or professionals," said Rasay, who added that many of the lab's projects are picked up by corporations like NASA or the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Student involvement with the lab often leads to internships or jobs, as with one alumnus who now works for the robotic hair implant industry.
Shepard worked as an assistant engineering intern at NASA Ames small spacecraft program this summer, an opportunity he attributes to the RSL.
"The RSL has given me a place to test the knowledge that I've acquired in the classroom," said Shepard. "It's somewhere I can really get my hands dirty and figure out if I really enjoy this stuff."
Contact Liz O'Brien at (408) 554-4546 or eobrien@scu.edu.