Matz Heads to NASA!

Last week was such a fun week! It was a pretty chill week in terms of work; the design team and I basically just spent our time printing our prototypes, reaching out to people around the Bay Area that could serve as resources for Dr. Cagle's project, and working on our own independent CAD projects (for example, I CAD'ed a fidget spinner from scratch using Fusion 360). However, the Smith students were offered the opportunity to go to lots of cool lectures and tours over the course of this week. As I mentioned in my last post, we went on a tour of the 80x40 wind tunnel on Monday. The fun and adventures only continued as the week progressed. I began last Tuesday by going to a lecture entitled "Satellite Formation-Flying for Future Space Science and Exploration." The talk was given by a Stanford professor named Simone D'Amico, and it was about how we can pair two or more satellites to accomplish mission objectives. He talked about the rendezvous of the Gemini 6 an

Last week was a short week in terms of work. After the four-day weekend for the 4th of July, I only had to work on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. My design team and I spent basically all day on Wednesday in the Singularity University iLab, working on 3D printed parts for Dr. Cagle's project. We were able to successfully print a few parts using the FormLabs printer. This particular 3D printer operates using a liquid resin. A platform lowers into a bath of the liquid resin, and a UV light is used to cure the liquid, layer by layer, into the shape that you want to print. I found that the FormLabs printer is very user friendly, and the resolution of the prints is exceptional. The FormLabs printer is an awesome tool that we have access to for Dr. Cagle's project. On Thursday morning, I went to a lecture about how humans adapt in space. I was expecting the talk to be about how humans psychologically adapt to being in space; after all, it can get awfully lonely up there. I also t

I am finally back on the NASA Ames campus after a long, exciting weekend away for the 4th of July! The week before I left, I mostly did a lot of internet research to gather information that could be useful for the design of Dr. Cagle's product. I combed over a lot of patents, articles, and other documents to gain information. I also went to some really cool lectures: Mars Geography & Exploration, hosted by NASA and the SETI Institute How to incorporate electronics into fashion, with Kitty Yeung Taking advantage of your internship & career opportunities at NASA, hosted by George Gorospe of NASA Ames I learned so much at the lectures, and it is so awesome to hear about different people's projects. Finally, on Friday I got meet Elle Stapleton, who works full time at the Singularity University Innovation Lab. (I mentioned Singularity in a previous post; they are a think tank here in the Silicon Valley that runs a summer program for post-docs.) She showed us