Space Cowgirls Engineering Team Represented UW in NASA Micro-g NexT Design Challenge

The University of Wyoming has been sending teams of undergraduate engineers to NASA for several years now, and this year continued that growing legacy of engineering innovation. After successfully completing Phase 1 of the Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams (NExT) engineering design challenge, one UW team -- the Space Cowgirls -- moved on to Phase 2.

The team was composed of mechanical engineering majors Serina Abriola, of Sewell, N.J.; Adrianna France, of Fort Collins, Colo.; Annalise Gade, of Worland; Alexa Mazur, of Lander; Juneau Paulsen, of Baldwin, Wisc.; and Elizabeth Taplin, of Longmont, Colo.

This all-female team undertook NASA’s challenge to design, build and test a “Star Shooter” capable of attaching soft goods between old components and new components for thermal protection at the boundary between the two. The tasks outlined in the design challenge are intended to address real-world needs in space travel and exploration. In this case, such a device might be used during an EVA (an extra-vehicular activity, such as a spacewalk) on the International Space Station.

The team’s process for completing its device included many rounds of brainstorming; modeling with the program SolidWorks; 3D printing component parts to test them; and then producing multiple prototypes as the team adjusted its design and methods.

“Our main takeaways from the trip were that engineering is a long process with many bumps along the way,” Taplin says. “But every failure helps you learn and improve on the next iteration.”

That iterative process and their organizational approach, dividing the work into subunits within the team to focus on modeling, 3D printing, outreach and financial management, respectively, helped the Space Cowgirls work well as a team and contributed to their ultimate success. That success included progressing from design to building and testing in the competition, with a trip to Houston in early June for device testing by professional divers in a real-world underwater space simulation environment. During the test, students had the task of directing the divers on the use of their device from the lab’s control room.

“Travel to the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston was a dream opportunity,” Mazur says. “The realization that we were working with real NASA scientists and engineers brought on the realization that, as a woman in engineering, we could work directly with some of the most important and impactful science of our generation. This experience has caused us to strive for the highest of dreams and believe in ourselves as young, aspiring engineers.”

In addition to the invaluable hands-on learning experience and professional networking opportunities afforded by the challenge, the team found the full process itself -- working as a team, producing a product from idea to functional object, budgeting and outreach --intensely rewarding and valuable.

“We would like to thank our adviser, the engineering department, as well as the Wyoming Space Grant Consortium. Funding by organizations like them make this competition and experience possible,” Abriola says.