MichSpace

Working with JPL, eight University of Michigan students designed, built and tested the Material Handling Chain (MHC) for NASA's Habitat Demonstration Unit (HDU). The HDU is full scale prototype of a habitat that allows mission planners to run through potential “day in the life” scenarios of a space outpost. These tests provide insights into the utilization of the different systems so that the exploration architecture and the operation concepts can be refined.

The Habitat Demonstration Unit Pressurized Excursion Module (HDU 1-PEM) a one story, 3-port habitat design concept, as seen during field testing in 2010.

The Material Handling Chain (MHC) being integrated with the HDU (above) as part of the 2011 Desert Research and Technology Study (RATS).

In 2011, the HDU is being reconfigured as the Deep Space Habitat element of NASA's exploration architecture to evaluate a scenario of a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) exploration mission. This includes updating and modifying systems in the 2010 configuration but also involves adding new systems and new modules. One of these new systems is the Michigan made Material Handling Chain that will allow astronauts to bring bulky objects into the habitat for service and storage. After a year of hard work in Darren McKague's AOSS 582/583, the students have completed the MHC and shipped it to the Black Point Lava Flow, Arizona where it is being integrated with the HDU.

Read more on the HDU project here.

Dr. Nilton Renno, a professor and researcher at U-M, was recently quoted in the New York Times for an article discussing water on Mars and elsewhere in the solar system. Working for Dr. Renno, I can say that this is a fascinating area of active research and will likely compose the bulk of my PhD thesis. It blows my mind to think that the research we do here at U-M may fundamentally change the the way we think about the universe - because where there is water, there could be life.

By GUY GUGLIOTTA

For those who hunt for life on other worlds, water in its liquid form is perhaps the leading
indicator. Life as we know it on Earth is based on water and carbon. And if organisms can prosper here in nasty environments — in geysers, in the depths of the sea, in toxic waste, in water that is too hot, too cold, too acidic or too alkaline — why could they not prosper out there?

Scientists for years regarded liquid water as a solar system rarity, for there was no place apart from Earth that seemed to have the necessary physical attributes, except perhaps Jupiter’s ice covered moon, Europa, which probably concealed a subterranean ocean. The past 20 years of space exploration, however, have caused what the astrobiologist David Grinspoon calls a sea change in thinking. It now appears that gravity, geology, radioactivity and antifreeze chemicals like salt and ammonia have given many “hostile” worlds the ability to muster the pressures and temperatures that allow liquid water to exist. And research on Earth has shown that if there is water, there could be life. Read more at NYTimes.com