NASA Grants Millions To UC Merced

Although the word nano means incredibly small, what students are working on, will change space flight in a very big way.

"This program is taking rocket science to your doorstep", says associate professor Tao Ye.

School of natural science officials say a $ 5 million dollar grant from NASA will go towards research and education. Allowing graduate students to work on converting average sized items inside space stations, into something extremely compact and accessible. It will also give under graduates the chance to have a fellowship with NASA. These students will work on everything from making smaller solar panels to handheld items that can monitor a persons overall health.

"How do you more effectively harvest light in space and how do you monitor and how do you monitor astronauts health", says associate professor Jennifer Lu.

The work they’ll be doing will not only help reduce the size, but cost of sending objects into space. Ye says, "it costs about $ 10,000 thousand dollars to launch one pound of payload into space, I’m just talking about orbit, not talking about Mars".

The grant money will dramatically improve the department’s research capabilities.

"Under this grant we will purchase a very high resolution microscope and in the center here we will host the microscope and eventually we’ll buy a new facility and more instruments", says Lu. Ye agrees, "that’s why we really need specialized equipment to study the nano materials, once we can see them we can think about ways to make them".

Graduate students will also be able to visit NASA and report on their findings and progress.

"This is just the beginning, I think there will be a lot more exciting opportunities", says Ye.

Officials tell us they hope this grant will also help recruit students to come to the school.