A group of six University of Central Florida students and alums from a range of fields designed and won the Best Technical Poster award as finalists in NASA\u2019s recent Lunar Dust Challenge. They received the honor after NASA\u2019s 2021 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge Virtual Forum in November 2021.<\/p>\n
As part of NASA\u2019s BIG Idea Challenge to conquer lunar dust, the project \u2014 titled Lunar Dust Mitigating Electrostatic micro-Textured Overlay, or LETO \u2014 provided an opportunity of a lifetime to design, form and test new innovations to get the researchers on NASA\u2019s radar.<\/p>\n
With the theme centered around lunar dust, the UCF team designed a space suit material overlay for astronauts performing space exploration<\/a>. The moon\u2019s surface is covered in sharp, hazardous lunar dust that could be a danger to people and equipment.<\/p>\n \u201cOur group was familiar with creating polymer-based composite materials, so we saw it as a great opportunity to further expand our knowledge in the field and contribute to the space industry,\u201d says team member Yuen Yee Li Sip \u201917\u201919MS<\/strong>, a Ph.D. student studying materials science and engineering<\/a>. \u201cI greatly appreciate the research that I do, to be able to combine two or more components in one and create new materials with various properties.\u201d<\/p>\n