4 Engineering Students Earn NASA nods

Each year, NASA publishes a set of design challenges for high schools to propose design solutions. They call the program “Hunch” which stands for High school students Unite with NASA to Create Hardware. Two of the SWCHS proposals earned the design teams invitations to Rocket Park in Houston, TX, to demonstrate their ideas to NASA engineers, astronauts, and surgeons.

ENGELR & TORGERSON

It costs approximately $1 million per pound to bring cargo into space. Bringing every item that might be needed for every contingency is extremely cost ineffective— including medical instruments. The space station has a 3D printer that fabricates instruments on demand. Josh Engler and Bryce Torgerson developed a number of medical devices that are 3D printable and developed a UV sanitation chamber so materials can be reused in space.

WECKMAN & VIS

Working in space presents an Avery unique set of problems. Micro-gravity means that things just float around so the use of wheeled motorized devices just simply doesn’t work and because of the wide array of electronic magnetic devices that can’t be used. Max Weckman and Braden Vis proposed using puffs of air with a directional nozzle to maneuver a device around the International Space Station.