Iowa State Micro-g NExT

We are actually ahead of schedule tune in now to the livestream!!

First day finished at the NBL! We had a fantastic first day touring the NBL and getting to meet all the other teams! Testing day is tomorrow, June 7, at 10:30 am for our team. Teams only have 8 minutes for testing. Below is a live stream to watch!

https://microgravityuniversity.jsc.nasa.gov/about-micro-g-next

First day at the NBL! CyRocks is beyond excited for this week at the Johnson Space Center!

Testing week is finally here!! Project manager, Aaron Simpson, and team leads, Sam Whitlock and Emilee Evans, are headed to Houston! We have Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday full of activities with our testing date being Tuesday. We can’t wait for TALIN to be tested at the NASA Johnson Space Center Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory on Tuesday!!

Testing testing testing!

Our Micro G NExT team has had a month full of testing. We started the month with the regality chamber testing and then moved on the Neutral Buoyancy Lab testing and the EVA Glove testing!

Each test proved to be successful and furthered the analysis of our device. Our device even worked anchoring to a wall! There have been many great surprises this month and our project is constantly being taken to the NExT level!

Follow us for more on our journey to the NASA JSC NBL in June!

Suited up and ready to go! Our operations team just got done with our first round of lunar dust/regolith testing! Operations members Jack Mendoza, and Rodrigo Romero were in the regolith chamber while Team Manager, Aaron Simpson, and Operations Team Lead, Emilee Evans, were in the operating room.

Lunar regolith is an issue for many space tools due to how abrasive and sharp the dust is. If lunar regolith clogs or seeps into the lunar tool, the tool’s functionality is compromised. Our team has done plenty of research about lunar dust and how to mitigate it in our device.
Since our team is prototyping a lunar reusable surface anchoring device that would be constantly exposed in lunar regolith on the Moon, it is extremely important.

The main two ways that our team prevented lunar dust in our device was enclosing our internal components in the locking mechanism, and adding side covers to our surface mechanisms enclosing the foam. As you can see, those mitigation strategies worked excellent when our device was covered in regolith. There was very minimal dust that seeped into our device.

All team members present in this testing had to undergo a training process and read a manual. Each team member had on a half face respirator while the team members in the chamber also had on a fully enclosed suit. Safety is a top priority for our team!

Overall, the device was tested successfully in the regolith chamber and showed the team that lunar regolith will not be a problem for our device! We lifted a rock in the chamber and also anchored to a rock while measuring the holding force.

Meet our Micro-G team this semester!

We are an Iowa State University competition team competing in the NASA Micro-G NExT challenge. Last semester, our team decided to tackle the lunar reusable surface anchoring device challenge. After hard work last semester, we then got selected by NASA to move on to phase 2 of the challenge! This semester has been full of outreach/STEM engagement, and also rapid prototyping and testing of our device.

Our operations team has been busy with outreach and testing work! We had our first outreach event last Saturday, where 11th grade minority students interested in STEM were guided through how to design a lunar reusable anchoring device by our team! The students loved the process and had very innovative ideas! Our team also went through lunar dust training and respirator use to prepare for testing in our own Iowa State Lunar Regolith Simulator!

Our manufacturing team has been busy in the lab rapid prototyping different pins on the surface mechanisms of our device and also updating the CAD model as we make new discoveries, changes, and progress!

We plan to keep manufacturing and testing to ultimately send our device to NASA Johnson Space Center Neutral Buoyancy Lab this spring! We cannot wait to see our device tested in June and include all of you in our progress along the way!

Pictured back from left: Trenton Turner, Rodrigo Romero, Sam Whitlock, Oliver Bohac, Aaron Simpson
Pictured front from left: Sam Haley, Hunter Underwood, Emilee Evans, Jack Mendoza

Earlier this month, our team presented our semester progress at a Make to Innovate - M:2:I poster presentation symposium in Howe Hall. We accomplished much this fall towards our goal of developing a lunar reusable surface anchoring device for the NASA Micro-g NExT student challenge! We brainstormed a solution, modeled our design, and constructed an initial prototype while creating videos, presentations, and a proposal that described our idea. It was fun discussing Micro-g and our design with other engineering students and ISU faculty. Our team is passionate about contributing to space exploration, and we strive to share this passion with others!
NASA STEM

The design proposal may be submitted, but it's never too early to be planning manufacturing and evaluating areas of design improvements! We want our lunar tool device to be the best it can be for NASA Astronauts! Our team is excited each day to be participating in the NASA STEM challenge!

Success! We are so happy to announce that our team has completed and submitted our proposal and concept pitch video for a lunar reusable surface anchoring device as part of the NASA Micro-g NExT Challenge! We have spent the past several months brainstorming, computer modeling, prototyping, and testing our idea in order to reach this critical milestone. Our team is so excited that we get to contribute to space exploration! We are looking forward to seeing if we are selected to advance in the challenge so we can continue our work next semester!

The team is back to work this year with both new and old faces! This semester, we are designing and writing a proposal for a lunar reusable surface anchoring device that can assist astronauts or stabilize robots or lunar structures.

For those who don't know, we are participating in the NASA Microgravity Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams (Micro-g NExT) challenge, where undergraduate students design, build, and test a device useful for space exploration. Teams can be selected to travel to the Johnson Space Center to have their prototypes tested by professional divers at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (the giant pool where astronauts are trained)! Teams also conduct public outreach. Micro-g NExT is an Artemis Student Challenge that supports the upcoming Artemis Program missions to the Moon! You can read more about Micro-g NExT here: https://microgravityuniversity.jsc.nasa.gov/about-micro-g-next.cfm

The ISU Micro-g NExT team works through the ISU Department of Aerospace Engineering's Make to Innovate - M:2:I program that engages engineering students in hands-on aerospace projects that seek to solve real-world problems.

We can't wait to share our progress with you this year!