University Of Tulsa Students Could Help NASA With Future Lunar Missions

NASA is getting ready to launch Artemis 1 on its return journey to the moon and a project by TU students could help with future lunar missions.

The project came about after NASA failed to anchor to a comet by drilling to its surface in 2014, but some former seniors and a junior at TU came up with a solution.

Months of hard work and hundreds of hours led up to this moment.

"Whenever it was actually working, like I remember sitting there and seeing it in the pool open up and it makes a cute octopus shape. The first time it did it I was like, 'oh my gosh,' it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. It was, it was stunning," said Kayla Eiland, TU Graduate.

A group of Mechanical Engineering students at TU developed a lunar anchoring device for their Senior Design Projects course.

"We typically find the project for the students," said Steven Tipton, TU Professor of Mechanical Engineering. "But [Rianne Brown] wanted to pick her project and so, we let her."

Tipton said he looked into funding and knew he and other professors could help make this happen.

That is one of three challenges given by NASA in August of 2021 that students from across the country chose from.

"Micro-G-Next is a way of getting colleges involved with real problems astronauts are facing today," said Julia Behlmann, TU Senior.

"A lot of the senior design projects have like a very good scope of, 'okay, here's what we need to work on, and these are the dimensions of it. This is what it has to be able to do.' And I remember showing up to the first meeting and we had popsicle sticks and rubber bands and I was like wow we have a long way to go," said Eiland.

The “Basic Rock Anchoring Device” or 'BRAD' had to grab onto rock without breaking it, as well as be deployed with big space gloves and hold at least 10 pounds.

"There were a lot of rules we had to follow cause space is tricky," said Behlmann. "We couldn't penetrate the rocks surface. We could only scratch it and grip to the nonconformities already existing. So that's why we used fishhooks to simulate micro-spines because they needed to grab the surface with little pin pricks without damaging the rock."

"I started with the project before we had approval from the professors," said George Legan, TU Senior. "[The week phase 1 was due] I just sat at a computer and for 12 hours did non-stop 3D modeling to get us to a baseline computer model, by the time the week had finished I put another 70 hours onto the model... The whole model, by the time we submitted it, got over 150 hours in a week."

NASA advanced the team to phase two which includes building the device.

"They'd break it and I'd say well make it stronger next time and they'd just do it," said Tipton.

TU tested BRAD at the Johnson Space Center in June and was one of eight teams in their challenge invited to do so. Team members said it was cool to see everyone's design.

"From that engineering mindset, seeing all the different ways that the problem was solved even when everyone at some point in time had everypne else's ideas, for me that was really interesting," said Legan.

"There was a handful of design that we were like, 'Oh my gosh, they figured it out.' We'd go over and look at their designs and ask, 'How'd you do it' because we talked about it," said Eiland.

"There's a guy 40 feet under water and he's actually using your device and you've got 10 minutes to see if it really will work," said Eiland. "This is the plan if he's left-handed. This is the plan if he's right-handed. Here's what his name is, you know. We had to have every step accounted for because we didn't have a lot of time and we didn't have room for error."

"It was so cool. It was really amazing," said Tipton. "I used to say you might save the Earth someday. You could land this thing on an asteroid, grab onto a rock, drill through it, and blow this asteroid up before it hits the earth. So, you might be saving the earth someday. Who knows."

"Each person on the team came point to somewhere on the design and be like, 'I came up with that.' Or 'I did this,'" said Eiland.

NASA may use BRAD's features in future outer space voyages like the Artemis 1 mission to the moon.

"I think they're gonna bring something like that up there with them to the moon cause they're gonna be messing around on the moon a lot," said Tipton.

Tipton said many undergrads were paying attention last semester and a few students are already planning to compete in NASA's 2023 challenge, which includes five projects to choose from.

The creators of BRAD talked about how much support they had, adding not only did they have the best team, but they couldn't have done it without their professors.