Napa Valley College Students Compete To Help Design New NASA Spacesuits

This past Wednesday I had the privilege of interviewing Napa College Student Everett Caldwell, the Captain of “Team Invictus”, which is the collective of Napa Valley College students who are currently competing to collaborate with NASA on redesigning Spacesuits for Astronauts. Pretty heady stuff, but Everett was undeterred in our interview, saying “we’re competing with Columbia University, Johns Hopkins and others for the opportunity to help develop amazing upgrades to current Spacesuit technology, and I like our chances against those other schools!” In fact, Napa Valley College is one of 20 colleges and universities nationwide that are left in the challenge, known by the acronym “SUITS” which stands for Spacesuit User Interface Technologies for Students. Just being selected to participate in the challenge is an honor, as Everett explained, and the amount of scientific and tech knowledge required to be considered for the ultimate collaboration with NASA is off the charts. It’s safe to say I would not have been chosen by my college peers to join Team Invictus (or any other team, frankly); these are the cream-of-the-crop STEM students competing at the highest level. Our KUIC communities send out our best-of-luck mojo to these amazing scientists: Godspeed Team Invictus!

John Young