Ten seniors in a precision machining program at the Lebanon County Career and Technology Center in South Lebanon Township are making parts for the International Space Station through a partnership with the High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware, also known as the NASA HUNCH program.
The Lebanon County Career and Technology Center is currently the only school in Pennsylvania manufacturing flight hardware for NASA. Other Pennsylvania schools are involved in other HUNCH- related programs.
“It’s a great opportunity for the kids to put this on their resume,” Glenn Meck, administrative director said. “You don’t see too many 18-year-olds coming out and saying ‘I made parts for NASA’ on their resume. It’s something they’ll always remember about being here.”
He said when this project is done and the parts installed students will sign a special locker that will be sent to the space station.
“So, their names will be in space. How many people in this world can say something like that?” said Meck.
The class has been tasked with making parts for handrails that will be used to help astronauts stay stationary in zero gravity. The handles will be set along a wall to allow astronauts to grab and pull themselves through and also wedge their feet in and hold themselves in place.
More than a year ago, instructor Eric Tanger looked into the program after hearing about it from an instructor in another state. He said the project became real for the students when they received the blueprints and the parts supplied by NASA, and later met with engineers and purchasing agents from NASA over Zoom.
The students were required to draw or model the parts in three-dimensional space on their computer systems, then printed them so they could see the parts in their hands. The students are now writing the computer code that tells the machine how to make the part and are validating the parts. Once they know their programs are good to go, the students will then use the material supplied by NASA to make the parts and inspect them. After the parts are completed, they will be sent off to NASA.
On one afternoon in early February, two groups of students were working on the project. Dominique Martin of Annville Township and Isaac Graby of Lebanon were writing a program to make a device to hold their part.
“I thought it was a unique opportunity,” said Graby, who is thinking about becoming a traveling machinist. “Because as a kid you always got to learn about [NASA].”
Scott Doyno of Palmyra and Rhett Musser of South Lebanon Township were working in a classroom with computer software and measuring the prototypes.
“To think that we’re making something that’s going up to the International Space Station up in space is pretty cool,” Musser said.
Tanger said job opportunities for machinists abound and working on this project is not unlike working for a large government contractor.
“Those are the ones that get the big government contracts and so it puts us in that same level,” he said. “We’re holding the same standards, doing all the same documentation that they would have to do. It’s a huge opportunity for the kids. They get to learn right from NASA how the paperwork needs to be, how to inspect the part, what goes into all of the quality control things.”
The program, High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware, began 19 years ago with three schools producing hardware training items for the space station and has grown to more than 282 schools from 47 states. In addition to hardware, NASA HUNCH also has partnerships with high schools that include software, design and prototyping, culinary and video and media.
The International Space Station was launched in 1998 and orbits 250 miles above the surface of the Earth. The station serves as a research laboratory for astrobiology, meteorology, astronomy, physics and other fields of study.
NASA intends to operate the space station until the end of 2030, when it will be retired and crashed into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.
But for now these students in Lebanon County are just happy to have this opportunity to work with NASA.
“I think a lot of people dream of doing something like this,” Doyner said, “making a part for NASA.”
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