Nov 20 2009
From The Space Library
NASA announced that its Centennial Challenges program had awarded US$350,000 to a pair of designers who had won first and second place for the designs they had entered in the 2009 Astronaut Glove Challenge. Peter K. Homer of Southwest Harbor, Maine, won US$250,000 for his design, and Ted Southern of Brooklyn, New York, won US$100,000 for his. The 2009 competition required that gloves meet all the basic requirements of NASA’s current spacesuit gloves but exceed NASA’s flexibility requirements. NASA had asked all teams to develop a complete glove, including the outer, thermal-micrometeoroid-protection layer and the inner, pressure-restraining layer. Homer and Southern had tied in several categories, but Homer, who had won US$200,000 in the first Astronaut Glove Challenge in 2007, won first prize again by outscoring his rival in the joint-flexibility and pressure tests. The joint-flexibility tests involved 30 minutes of pinching and gripping tests, as well as other tests requiring finger flexing and the manipulation of small objects. The pressure test involved filling the glove with air in a tank of water until it burst. Homer’s glove had held out without bursting until pressure reached 20 pounds per square inch (9 kilograms per square centimeter), whereas Southern’s glove had made it to 17 pounds per square inch (7.7 kilograms per square centimeter). Engineers from NASA’s JSC and KSC , as well as NASA’s spacesuit manufacturer ILC Dover of Dover, Delaware, had measured and evaluated the designs.
NASA, “NASA Awards $350,000 to Winning Astronaut Glove Designers,” news release 09-277, 20 November 2009; Nicholos Wethington, “Astronaut Glove Challenge Winners Announced,” Universe Today, 20 November 2009.
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