Duquesne Students Make the Cut with NASA Project

A group of Duquesne students are working to create a zip tie cutter that can be used in outer space as part of a NASA challenge that concludes with a trip to Houston in May.

Called the NASA Microgravity NExT Challenge, students must design and manufacture a zip tie cutter that allows astronauts to cut lines to remove payloads and hardware outside of the International Space Station. Making the task more daunting is that it must be done in microgravity, so the zip line needs to be captured by the astronaut to keep the payload from floating away.

The students began the project this past fall, creating designs to meet NASA’s requirements, which included that the cutter be lightweight, contain no sharp points, need only manual power and be used by either hand. The group submitted designs to NASA and learned in December that they were one of just seven university teams selected to manufacture the zip tie cutter and participate in NASA’s final challenge in May. Their competitors include students from UCLA, the University of Texas and Columbia University.

The nine students, most of whom study in Duquesne’s Biomedical Engineering Program, took the project on themselves, according to Dr. Ben Goldschmidt, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and the students’ mentor during the project.

“These students are really self-motivated,” Goldschmidt said. “They discovered the project and took off with it. They aren’t being sponsored by a school or a club—they have been self-sufficient in creating the designs and the prototype.”

The Duquesne team is led by biomedical engineering student Madelyn Hoying, who is interning at the NASA Langley Research Center, where she conducts research in the Laser Remote Sensing branch, which covers materials development, spectroscopy and engineering of laser devices.

Since December, the students have been working carefully to acquire materials and assemble the cutter so that it meets NASA’s standards, said Clare Flanagan, a freshman majoring in biomedical engineering.

“The project is very challenging,” Flanagan said. “We went through several designs to ensure we could meet NASA’s requirements. Now we are working to create the prototype so we can begin testing the product. We are excited by the work and look forward to demonstrating the prototype in Houston.”