Imagine trying to work on an appliance but having no place to put your tools. You want to put them down, but they float away and bump into other things. Additional tools you need for the job are in another room. What do you do?
That suggests the working conditions astronauts will face on the International Space Station. The solution, though -in part at least- may come from 12 teams of students in the Industrial Design Department at Auburn University. The 36 junior-level students are working with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. on an industrial design project. The job: design a temporary stowage kit to be used with a furnace in the Materials Science Research Facility on the Space Station. It has to be versatile, portable, easy to use and able to accommodate a variety of tools and parts.
The students will present their design concepts and full-scale mockups to NASA engineers at Marshall Center beginning at 8:00 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 4, at Building 4200. Each team will have 30 minutes for their presentation. Their development materials and the mockups will be set up in a hallway adjoining the conference room.
Note to Editors / News Directors: If interested in covering this activity, please contact Jerry Berg of the Marshall Media Relations Office at (256) 544-0034. For more information, visit Marshall's News Center on the Web at: http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/news