Engineering capstone students take flight to test laser welding for space

How do you repair a spaceship in orbit? Under the current operating procedures, the parts would be assembled on Earth and then flown up to space and attached, racking up tremendous costs.  

A group of Ohio State University College of Engineering senior capstone students and faculty, along with a team of NASA engineers, are developing an alternative – a robotic laser welding machine that can manufacture and join materials in space. The research project is funded by the Ohio Federal Research Network, which is managed by Parallax Advanced Research.  

However, to accurately test the machine, their research would have to go to new heights, literally.  

The LUNAR Weld team (l to r): Sarah Huetter, Prof. Antonio Ramirez, Eugene Choi, Aaron Brimmer, Will McAuley, Prof. Boyd Panton and Grant Smith

During the first week of classes this semester, Ohio State’s LUNAR Weld team traveled to Santa Maria, California, to test the machine’s capability in microgravity through parabolic flight, in which an aircraft flies up and down at 45º angles to reproduce gravity-free conditions. 

Those brief weightless moments simulated a space environment in which the team was able to conduct a series of tests on several materials commonly found in spacecrafts: aluminum, titanium, and stainless steel.  

The collaboration began in 2021, when NASA reached out to Welding Engineering Professors Antonio Ramirez and Boyd Panton to begin development on this groundbreaking technology.  

“We started with five capstone students and an old vacuum chamber loaned to us from NASA Langley,” said Ramirez. “This has been one of the most rewarding projects of my career. These [students] are the people who will develop the technology to make robotic laser welding in space possible.” 

Eugene Choi was one of the students on the first capstone team as an undergraduate in 2021. He is continuing to work on the project while pursuing a Ph.D. in welding engineering.  

“This is a very big project, and we couldn’t have done it with just one or two people, we needed people from different majors, such as electrical, mechanical, and material sciences engineering,” said Choi. “Everyone coming together and making this work has been pretty amazing, if we didn’t have any one of them, we wouldn’t have been able to do this.” 

The complete Ohio State student team to make the trip were Choi, fellow welding engineering graduate students Aaron Brimmer (Ph.D.) and Will McAuley (M.S.), senior mechanical engineering student Grant Smith, and recent electrical and computer science engineering graduate Sarah Huetter. Together, the team worked countless hours leading up to the trip to make additions to the machine’s hardware and software in preparation for flight, along with meeting with NASA engineers multiple times a week to provide updates. 

“The collaboration on this project has been amazing, one second you’re a college student, and another you’re working on something incredibly important for NASA,” said Huetter. “I really liked how we all had our own specializations within the project.”  

After two separate flights consisting of 70 parabolas, the team was able to conduct 69 successful tests, producing valuable samples and data for further analysis.  

“The fact these parabolic flights went near perfectly was by far one of the most rewarding, and relieving, moments of my life,” said Brimmer. “With this first flight under our belt, I’m eagerly looking forward to more opportunities to work with our many collaborators on more parabolic flights.” 

Now, the group is back at Ohio State’s Starlab-George Washington Carver Science Park Payload and Analog Research Facility (PARF), analyzing the data and preparing for more parabolic flights to advance this critical technology.