built at the Kennedy Space Center, partnering with NASA to see if the Divergent Deployable Wastewater Treatment Facility can work as a potential prototype for a system astronauts could use for liquid and solid waste on a lunar base. The facility is attached to UND\u2019s Integrated Lunar\/Martian Analog Habitat, one of the university\u2019s forays into exploring human spaceflight.<\/p>\n
The ILMAH is part of the Human Spaceflight Laboratory, which has been in action since 2004. The lab\u2019s research is focused on the design and production of space suit and habitat prototypes. According to its website, UND is the first university with a NASA-funded lab dedicated to designing and making space-exploration and planetary surface exploration suits, as well as the first university to have two fully operational spaceflight simulators.<\/p>\n
UND also has an annex of its lab at the Kennedy Space Center, de Le\u00f3n said. Master\u2019s and Ph.D. students working on their dissertation or thesis also can work on different projects with NASA.<\/p>\n
One NASA-funded project upon which the Human Spaceflight Lab is working is a 3D-printed space suit. While fabric suits come in specific sizes and can only be worn by astronauts who fit them, a 3D-printed suit can be made by scanning the astronaut\u2019s body and building it specific to their measurements. The prototype printed suit has flexible filaments and more rigid areas. The idea, de Le\u00f3n said, is that future astronauts could take the 3D printing machine with them and print out parts, or even a full space suit if they need to.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen you reduce the dependency on the Earth,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to become Earth independent as much as possible to reduce the costs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Independence is important. While astronauts on the International Space Station may take a few hours to get back on solid ground due to orbiting around the planet, any issues that come at a greater distance from Earth can be critical, de Le\u00f3n said.<\/p>\n
UND has been thinking about these problems for years, he said. When the Human Spaceflight Lab was set up, people asked why.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018The only thing that we are doing is going in the Space Shuttle, and now we are building the space station, but you guys are working for the moon and Mars. That\u2019s way in the future,\u2019\u201d de Le\u00f3n recalled. \u201cAnd that future is now.\u201d<\/p>\n
American innovation, universities and companies can be the difference in getting Americans back on the moon first. Though no country can claim the moon, there are resources concentrated in specific areas that are first come, first served. While Russia was the competitor for getting the first human on the moon, America is now racing China to get back to it.<\/p>\n
China has the benefit of no elections and doesn\u2019t have to change its space program plans every few years, but NASA has the benefit of working with universities and companies that have their own projects. For example, in the 1960s, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed the first digital guidance computer that was critical for the Apollo astronauts, de Le\u00f3n said.<\/p>\n
UND\u2019s projects and connection to NASA put the university \u201cin a special position to help NASA go back to the moon before China,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It has been quite a ride for de Le\u00f3n, who watched the moon landing as a child on a black-and-white TV in his family\u2019s kitchen in Argentina. It propelled him to do what he does now, and he hopes to have plenty more years contributing to human spaceflight, \u201cwhich, I think, is the most interesting thing that someone can be doing in the 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just remarkable, the journey of humanity. I think that the best is yet to come,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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