CPF officials meet with NASA-trained Jordanian students

AMMAN — Crown Prince Foundation (CPF) officials on Tuesday met with Jordanian students who finished a training programme at NASA under the “Cooperation with NASA” initiative, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Tuesday.

The participants were enrolled in a 10-week intensive training programme under the supervision of NASA experts.

CPF Acting CEO Nour Abul Ragheb, who headed the meeting, expressed the foundation’s pride with what trainees presented during the programme.

Members of the participating team — consisting of Abdulrahman Bideir Muhiddin Zaatar, Maha Afif and Mohammad Salti — presented a detailed presentation of their academic and personal experiences during their stay in the US.

The initiative is the first NASA partnership with an Arab country, through which students from all engineering colleges in the Kingdom have the opportunity, in coordination and support from the CPF, to conduct academic and practical research at NASA’s Ames Research Centre to develop their skills in aviation and space sciences.

Zaatar, a student at Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT), said that his experience at NASA was a “turning point” in his life.

His project included designing electric systems for a nano-satellite (CubeSat) that is composed of solar cells, batteries and electronic gadgets. 

CubeSats are a type of research spacecraft called nanosatellites that are flown as auxiliary payloads on previously planned missions. The cube-shaped devices are approximately 10.15cm long, have a volume of about one quart and weigh about 1.36kg, according to NASA.

Bideir, from the German-Jordanian University, said that one of the problems facing long space missions is the credibility of advanced life support systems and their costs and effects on the crew, noting that he worked on developing an artificial biological membrane that simulates human membranes.

This membrane has the ability to treat sewage water and is able to conduct self-maintenance when encountering physical or chemical damages, the student noted.

Afif, a student from the Jordan University of Science and Technology, said that exploring Mars is NASA’s next goal, and to ensure the success of the mission, it is necessary to present high level medical services to astronauts during their trip to Mars, which was the basis of her work on the “Medical Data Architecture” project.

Afif said that the project aims at designing a computerised medical system for space ships, which automatically records, saves and analyses biological signals and medical information, and then gives the proper diagnosis for the case.

Salti worked on a project that studied Earth surfaces that are similar to the surface of Mars. He concluded that the surface of Atacama Desert in Chilli has similar climate conditions to those on Mars.

His experiment included using the K-REX2 vehicle, which was developed at Ames and equipped with a digging tool that can reach a two-metre depth to extract soil samples and transfer them to special devices on the vehicle for analysis to look for any life indicators on Mars.

At the end of the meeting, students expressed their appreciation of CPF for giving them the opportunity to participate in the programmes and having a look at advanced learning environments.