Nineteen undergraduate student teams from 18 universities around the nation will participate in NASA’s new microgravity activity called Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams (Micro-g NExT) this summer.
Micro-g NExT challenges students to work in teams to design and build prototypes of tools to be used by astronauts during spacewalk training in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) located at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The tools will be designed to address authentic, current space exploration problems. Teams will travel to Houston to test their prototypes in the simulated microgravity environment of the NBL, the same 6.2-million-gallon indoor pool used to train astronauts for spacewalking.
This project coincides with the 50th anniversary of NASA extravehicular activities (EVAs). March 18 is the anniversary of the first spacewalk by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who left his Voskhod-2 vehicle for a 12-minute tethered walk, and June 3 is the golden anniversary of NASA astronaut Ed White’s Gemini IV 23-minute tethered spacewalk, the first for a U.S. astronaut.
Micro-g NExT is managed by the Office of Education at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The program helps support the agency’s education policy of using NASA’s unique missions and programs to engage and encourage students to pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers.
Participating students, by state, are from:
- California — California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
- Connecticut — Yale University, New Haven
- Florida — Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach; University of South Florida, Tampa
- Idaho — Boise State University, Boise
- Illinois — University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
- Indiana — Purdue University, West Lafayette
- Iowa — Iowa State University, Ames
- New York — State University of New York at Buffalo, Amherst
- Nebraska — University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln
- North Carolina — Duke University, Durham; High Point University, High Point.
- Oklahoma — Oklahoma State University, Stillwater
- Texas — Houston Community College, Houston; Trinity University, San Antonio; University of Texas at El Paso; University of Texas at Austin; University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson
To learn more about Micro-g NExT, visit:
http://microgravityuniversity.jsc.nasa.gov
For more information about NASA’s education programs, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/education
For more information about NASA EVAs, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/suitup
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Catherine Pate
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-792-8670
catherine.pate@nasa.gov