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| Information provided by the University of North Dakota |
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UND Students Help Build Mars Planetary Exploration Suit
 The first astronaut to land on Mars may wear a special suit designed by University of North Dakota (UND) aerospace engineer Pablo de Leon and built, in part, by student teams from several North Dakota colleges. Student "astronauts" donned the suit and put it through its paces in the Mars-like dusty North Dakota Badlands in 2006 and at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah this year. Their efforts nabbed prominent global electronic media coverage and articles in top national science and technology magazines.
The suit's primary test subject was Fabio Sau, an Italian attorney and space studies policy student who is pursuing a master's degree in space studies at UND. Formally dubbed the "University of North Dakota-National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Planetary Space Suit Design Team," the group is led by Argentine-born de Leon. He manages the North Dakota Experimental (NDX) planetary exploration suit project, which includes students—some of whom have already scored space-related jobs at NASA and in the space industry—and faculty advisors from UND, North Dakota State College of Science, Turtle Mountain Community College, North Dakota State University, and Dickinson State University. The project is part of a NASA grant awarded to UND and the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium to build a prototype for the next generation of planetary suits that NASA will need to realize its Mars exploration vision. "A lot of people thought we were crazy to undertake this project," says De Leon. "But its success unequivocally testifies to the hard work, perseverance, creativity, and ingenuity of North Dakota's young people." The UND-led project aimed to economically and quickly produce a suit that could be used in the rough surface terrain on Mars, where gravity is about one-third that of the Earth. The team's effort was widely noted. Four-time Space Shuttle astronaut Thomas Jones, writing in Popular Mechanics, pointed out that the UND-led effort resulted in a suit that cost just $100,000 to build—and it was accomplished in just 14 months by a team of mostly undergraduate students from the five North Dakota colleges and universities. For more information, please refer to the following resources:
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