PSU students shine in projects with NASA

Jacob Stich consults with a member of the NASA scientific team on board the space agency’s zero gravity research plane about the PSU research project.

Two groups of Pittsburg State University students have lived the Kansas motto this year and while they may not have actually reached the stars, their dreams have taken them well beyond the bounds of Earth.

One team of students designed, built and raced the winning vehicle in the annual NASA Great Moonbuggy Race in Huntsville, Ala. A second group of students designed and flew with an experiment that was selected to go on a NASA zero-gravity research plane this spring in Houston. For both groups, their experiences were part of well-established linkages with the space agency that give Pitt State students opportunities far beyond what many expect at a regional university.

This was the third time a Pitt State team has won the NASA Moonbuggy competition. The annual event, which has its roots in NASA’s original quest to build a lunar vehicle, requires teams of students to design and construct a vehicle that is lightweight and sturdy and can be stored in a defined area. The competition has become part of a capstone project for students in manufacturing engineering technology. The students believe that their hands-on experience in PSU’s College of Technology gives them an advantage over students from much larger schools who do not have the same kind of manufacturing experience.

The students who designed the experiment that NASA selected for its Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program put two years of work into their project. The team, which included majors in physics, electronics engineering and commercial graphics, won the right to test their experiment on the NASA plan that simulates everything from zero gravity to twice Earth’s gravity last year. A problem with the plane delayed the flight until this spring, however.

The student experiment was Crystal Oscillator Acceleration Sensitivity Testing or COAST. Data from the experiment will help the students learn what effects different levels of gravity have on the operation of crystal oscillator’s, which is valuable information for those concerned with communication with satellites.

The students who flew on the NASA flight said they were held to rigorous scientific and physical standards by the space agency. In choosing the PSU experiment, NASA put the PSU team in a select group of student teams from some of the best known research universities in the nation.

Whether designing a lunar vehicle or imaging floating in space, PSU students this year have demonstrated that the Kansas motto, “To the stars through difficulty,” is as applicable to today’s PSU students as it was to the settlers who brought Kansas into the Union 145 years ago.

The student teams:

Great Moonbuggy Race
Ryan Viola, McPherson
Ed Showalter, Overland Park
Rob Criger, Olathe
Jacob Lehman, Girard
Jorge Salina, Pittsburg

Crystal Oscillator Acceleration Sensitivity Testing
Cassandra Stuckey, Pittsburg
Jacob Stich, Chanute
Jeremy Burnison, Carl Junction, Mo.
Emily Pentola, Pittsburg

---Pitt State--