This year her big project was NASA TechRise, The Paint of Space. It’s a small capsule designed to test the behavior of paint drying in microgravity. Here’s the description:
Our team’s idea is to test if paint drying in microgravity will affect the color, texture, or dry time of the paint. In our experiment, we will expel paint into a foam roller using a syringe. The foam roller will begin painting an aluminum panel, which will move back and forth by rack and pinion powered by a servo motor.
She managed the project and team, helped figure out the mechanicals, and programmed the microcontroller to run the servo that pushed the paint out of a syringe onto a panel. Her team finally sent it off to NASA at the end of October, and it’s targeted for a launch on Blue Origin sometime spring 2023.
Prototype mock-up. Other team members not shown for privacy reasons.
Programming the microcontroller
Final assembly
Demo of the final assembly
Results due Spring 2023!