Carthage interns expand research at Johnson Space Center

During their summer internship as MOSAICS scholars, five Carthage students toured the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory near the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

 

The first group of Carthage interns in a research program established with NASA seed funding are making headway on a critical project this summer at Johnson Space Center.

EXPLORE SPACE SCIENCES AT CARTHAGE

Five Carthage students were selected for the MOSAICS program: Juliana Alvarez ’27, Owen Bonnett ’28, Semaje Farmer ’26, Skylar Farr ’26, and Braedon Larsen ’27. After conducting research from campus during the academic year, they’re finishing the yearlong opportunity at the JSC facility in Houston.

The interns are mentored by JSC engineers and Carthage professor Kevin Crosby, who received $300,000 from the space agency to start this program. Building on a promising solution that Prof. Crosby and a collaborator from Georgia Tech submitted to win last year’s NASA tank venting challenge, the team’s work centers on a new in-space refueling technology that could prove useful for sustained lunar operations.

“It has been an amazing and enlightening experience to see the inner workings of a NASA facility, and to get an idea of my future career paths while helping to advance space technology through engineering and research,” says Skylar.

Surrounded by motivated professionals with the space agency’s resources at their disposal, Braedon feels a “sense of collective purpose” driving the group’s work forward.

“This internship has really shown me what physics looks like in the real world,” he says. “I couldn’t be happier than when I’m given a problem and told to put my skills to work and solve it, and I feel that Carthage has prepared me well for this opportunity.”

This is one of several ongoing lines of research in Carthage’s well-established space sciences program. For nearly two decades, faculty and students have partnered with the space agency and leading companies to solve problems in the aerospace industry.