Murrysville residents are turning their eyes to the stars.

When Pittsburgh tech company Astrobotic launches a lunar lander to the moon next summer, it will have been tested by Murrysville company Software Design Solutions.

And the next time astronauts travel to the International Space Station, it’s possible they’ll be wearing clothing designed by a team of Franklin Regional seventh graders, who recently advanced to the final stage of NASA’s Wear Challenge.

“We were asked to design a garment that would protect astronauts from ionizing particles,” said Matthew Morcos, 12, who began the project as a sixth grader before his team members, along with the rest of Pennsylvania’s students, were sent home amid the coronavirus pandemic. The original 20 students were whittled down to a team of five, who met at a team member’s home during the summer to continue working.

The ionizing particles from which astronauts need protection are solar radiation particles from the sun. While the International Space Station is within Earth’s magnetic field, which helps shield it from solar radiation, the garment designs are meant to spark ideas about protecting astronauts undergoing deep-space travel in the future.

“Once astronauts venture into deep space … they may be exposed to the high-energy charged particles of galactic cosmic rays and solar particle events as well as secondary protons and neutrons,” NASA officials wrote in an overview of the Wear Challenge. “Spacecraft design is one of many ‘sheltering’ techniques used to protect crew members, but the use of wearable technologies as physical countermeasures are also beneficial and are being heavily researched.”

The Franklin Regional team also had to focus on other aspects of the garment.

“It was supposed to be comfortable, breathable and multi-functional,” Morcos said.

In late July, the five-student team was one of 18 school districts invited to participate in the second phase of the challenge, developing a prototype.

Below, see video of that prototype.

Team member Ariana Aranovich, 12, originally thought the challenge was, well, much more challenging in scope.

“I thought that they were going to wear these outside in space,” said Aranovich, who was happy to discover that the team was essentially designing functional “astronaut active-wear.”

“We did a bunch of research, and found that most of the fabrics people used were polyethylene and polyester,” Aranovich said.

Along the way, the team got a chance to talk with real astronauts and get their thoughts and preferences on the clothing.

“You need to come up with something that’s comfortable, flexible and protects from solar radiation — that’s a lot of stuff,” Morcos said.

While polyethylene is rich in hydrogen and serves very well as a solar radiation barrier, the team settled on polyester.

“Polyethylene is kind of a plastic,” Morcos said.

For the base garment, the team went with a bamboo shirt.

“For the outer garment, we have a lot of stuff going on,” said team member Anthony Poole, 12. “We have a water packet with a straw, a patch, some straps so that it will fit both larger and smaller astronauts, and we have a radiation pocket to determine how much radiation is being absorbed.”

The group was initially scheduled to give a presentation on their design at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

“Due to the pandemic, we had to show our work from home,” said team member Arnesh Parua.

The team is now one of five school districts that will showcase their designs to NASA in an online presentation in October.

Morcos said he initially viewed the challenge as a long shot at best.

“We thought it would be this thing where you design a garment,” he said. “We didn’t really realize it was this big of a deal. It got way bigger than we thought it would be.”

Arthur Danny, who along with his wife Sarah are both Franklin Regional Middle School science teachers and team sponsors, said he couldn’t be happier for the kids.

“It was just a perfect fit for this class of students,” he said. “They’re pretty hard-working and the sky’s really the limit.”

Sarah Danny said circumstances led the team to become even more resilient.

“I think a lot of times, people feel that kids were at a disadvantage this spring, but these kids were able to learn skills they weren’t planning to learn,” she said. “This gave them a chance to apply themselves to a real-world challenge, and it sped up a life lesson they wouldn’t have learned in a normal scenario. I’ve really enjoyed being able to work with them.”

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