To Mars... Via North Dakota

On Friday, ANN reported extensively on the new combined effort between NASA's Centennial Challenge and the X-Prize Foundation to fund a competition to build the a lunar lander. Such endeavours show NASA is getting serious about seeking new and better ways of thinking for space travel (and of course, they wouldn't mind if it's cheaper, too)... in fact, that's just one of the competitions we're seeing nationwide in NASA's effort to get to the moon, Mars and beyond.

Take what's going on in North Dakota these days as another example. There, students from five colleges -- University of North Dakota, North Dakota State, Dickinson State, the state College of Science and Turtle Mountain Community College -- have gotten together to design a new space suit for use on Mars.

In just over a year -- working with only a $100,000 NASA grant -- North Dakota Space Grant Consortium students have come up with a 47-pound suit unveiled this past weekend in "Mars on Earth" -- the Badlands of North Dakota.

The suit comes in two pieces, and takes the help of two people to get on. College students who built it say it's essentially a self-contained spacecraft.

The Associated Press reports it took about 20 minutes for UND Space Studies graduate student Fabio Sau to get the suit on Saturday. Afterwards, he walked out, waved to the small crowd gathered, and proceeded to explore prairie brush and cactus.

The suit is designed to allow the wearer can walk up a 45-degree slope. Sau said the gloves are pliable enough to tie a shoe, Sau said, and its boots are modified cold-weather hunting boots. The suit is worn over an inner pressure suit that also serves as heat insulation.

Mike Zietz, an NDSU junior who monitored space suit temperatures during Saturday's inaugural test, said it reached about 100 degrees inside the suit, and 70 degrees inside the helmet.

Oh, and if 47 pounds seems a bit heavy, Sau is quick to add it would only weigh about 16 pounds in Martian conditions.

"This is a very small project," Sau said. "But it was very well executed, and it's the first step toward something bigger and better."

No word yet on whether NASA is interested in continued research into the students' suit, which contains several innovative components including three under patent consideration. But consider this: a $100,000 Mars suit... compared to the $22 million space suits now used by shuttle astronauts.

In a year.

Better, cheaper and faster, eh?

FMI: www.space.edu/spacegrant/