The Museum of Science Fiction, the world’s first comprehensive science fiction museum, in partnership with NASA and Cornell University, named a team of students and faculty from The University of Texas at El Paso and Bowie High School winners of its international CubeSat competition.
The UTEP and Bowie team will be awarded $10,000 toward the completion of a CubeSat – a grapefruit-sized satellite designed to perform a specific task while in orbit around the Earth – and have their device launched into space upon completion.
These satellites usually collect data or take photos while in orbit; however, the UTEP and Bowie team’s CubeSat will send a manufacturing robot into space to perform basic tasks and to send data back to Earth in order to provide insight to other engineers, scientists and future researchers.
“These designs were selected based on a combination of innovation, technical feasibility, and successful articulation of a concept from science fiction” said Mason Peck, member of the museum’s board of advisors and director of Cornell University’s Space Systems Design Studio. “I want to congratulate these young minds who displayed a mature and professional degree of technological acumen with their proposals. I’m eager to see their designs go from the drawing board to reality and up into orbit.”
Winning entries from the global competition came from Ithaca, New York, and Suzhou, China, in addition to El Paso.
