A push to get teens interested in STEM careers wants local students to join a program to design and build devices to explore lunar caves.
Siddhi Raut, who completed the third cohort of the LCATS program, stands in front of a rendering at the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology showing what life could look like inside caves on the moon. Raut, who completed the program in 2017, worked on a rocket launch and a high altitude balloon.
The program goes through the school year only and pauses for the summer. The space STEM program creates a pathway to higher education for students who otherwise wouldn’t have access to such programs due to race or gender discrimination, said Louise Cantwell, executive director of the WEX Foundation.LCATS is usually a student’s first introduction to space STEM or space science, said Kathryn Bolish, logistics manager for the WEX Foundation.
The regolith is used to work on projects with Astroport interns, like the Brick Bot, a robot that LCATS students work on. The robot is a prototype that houses an induction heater that will go to the moon, pick up the moon dirt, funnel it into the induction heater, melt it and print bricks for development on the moon. The Brick Bot is only a working model; then the project moves into phase two and phase three, using NASA’s models and robots.
In their first year, LCATS students learn about sensing capabilities, like measuring heat, distance and light; and in the final year, students simulate a lunar mission at a local cave. In past years the students worked at the Robber Baron Cave and caves at the Kickapoo Cavern State Park. Astroport mechanical engineer Milton Cordova works with summer intern Frank Lucci, 15, to test a prototype for a NASA project Tuesday.Lucci, a high school student at BASIS Shavano, a charter school in North San Antonio, tested a prototype on Tuesday at the Astroport Space Tech lab across the street from Port San Antonio. He already wanted to study aerospace engineering and said the program encouraged that plan.
Kathryn Bolish, mathematician for Astroport, holds a roll of regolith filament, which is made out of a substance similar to the dust found on the surface of the moon.The hanging printer is a device that can print building components using lunar dust and other filaments. This device was designed by LCATS students in partnership with NASA, UTSA College of Engineering and Astroport Space Technologies.
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