University of North Texas 
Positioned oceanfront on the NASA Kennedy Space Center campus, Isaiah Sears (’24) waited in anticipation for his first rocket launch. The night sky was mostly illuminated with the stars. Then came an explosion of light.
“Everything lit up like a sunrise. It was stunning and a little loud — like the crackling sound of rain hitting an umbrella,” Sears says of the SpaceX rocket launch earlier this summer.
Sears has been fascinated with outer space since a grade school field trip to the planetarium in his hometown of Killeen. After that, he consumed whatever information he could find about the cosmos — much like fellow UNT master’s student Javier Solis (’24), whose discovery of blackholes through YouTube videos propelled him into his own captivation with space. This summer, the two had an opportunity they had only dreamed of before — to conduct research as interns for NASA’s Johnson and Kennedy space centers.
Future STEM Leaders
Their internship and research were part of a collaborative project UNT faculty in the College of Engineering and College of Science are working on with NASA scientists. The research — focused on developing more advanced heat transfer coatings for autonomous space vehicles — is supported by a nearly $900,000 Minority University Research and Education Project Curriculum Award that UNT earned from NASA in 2023.
Part of the grant is funding efforts to encourage future STEM professionals to pursue careers in space exploration via student involvement in the research and internships at NASA facilities, like Sears (pictured at left below) and Solis had this summer. In addition, the grant afforded the UNT research team the opportunity to award its first Eagles to the Moon scholarships earlier this year to undergraduate students Mari Salinas in physics and Lucas Wilhoyt in mechanical engineering.
“We’re hoping to get more students interested in aerospace sciences,” says Richard Zhang, UNT assistant professor in mechanical engineering and principal investigator for the heat transfer project. “Scholarships and internships are a few ways, but we’re also developing new courses and educational workshops to let students dig deeper into this field.”
The project’s research goal is to create new coatings to be lighter, more energy efficient and better able to withstand the fluctuating environments that will come as NASA explores new regions of the moon and beyond.
Zhang’s research collaborators on the project include UNT Regents Professor of chemistry Jeffry Kelber, John Beatty, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Texas Woman’s University, Sydney Taylor, aerospace engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and Matt Wittal, automation and robotics systems engineer at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
“Right now, spacecraft are using bulky pumps and fluids systems to support the electronics and batteries used in space exploration,” Zhang says. “These protective nano and microscale coatings we are developing could eliminate the need for those pumps and fluids, resulting in much lighter and more energy-efficient technology that can be resilient in varied space environments.”
Sears and Solis worked as research assistants for Zhang during their UNT undergraduate studies in mechanical and energy engineering and physics that they both wrapped up in May. The experience allowed them to conduct research on thermal protective coatings with advanced machines, such as one that performs Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to evaluate how materials absorb light at different wavelengths.
“There’s a lot of cutting-edge research happening at UNT’s Discovery Park and learning about that during my campus tour is one of the things that brought me here,” Sears says. “Getting to work with Dr. Zhang exposed me to understanding more of the optical side of materials and, of course, led to an internship at NASA where I’ve wanted to work since I was a kid.”
Research at NASA
Sears and Solis (pictured at right below) weren’t entirely new to NASA programs. The two separately participated in the online NASA L'SPACE Mission Concept Academy and previously worked as interns at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. But getting to work onsite at Kennedy and Johnson space centers this summer introduced them to a whole new experience with the space agency.
“They took us on lots of tours, including one that brought us to the spot where they marked the shuttle’s last landing,” Sears says. “To be able to stand in person at the very spot where NASA history was made was just a huge reminder of how far we’ve come and how technology can advance over the years.”
Sears worked under the guidance of NASA automation and robotics systems engineer Matt Wittal on a micro-gravity experiment for lunar dust. By recreating an environment simulating the surface of the moon, Sears and fellow researchers conducted tests using artificial lunar dust, launching it at various materials to observe how they would respond to lunar-like conditions.
“When you put lunar dust under a microscope, you see that it is very fine and super sharp” Sears says. “Our main goal with this research is to understand more about lunar dust dynamics and its adhesive effects to materials. That way, we can mitigate the damage it could cause on future lunar vehicles.”
After seeing the need for experiment materials to be transported between different labs at Kennedy Space Center, Sears had the idea to create a protective casing so that materials would stay shielded from any external elements. He says his internship also helped him improve his communication skills when it comes to talking about the research and its purpose.
Solis, who worked on the heat transfer team led by NASA aerospace engineer Sydney Taylor at Johnson Space Center in Houston, spent most of his time preparing a calorimetry setup for experiments to measure the amount of heat coming from metamaterial samples and received more FTIR spectroscopy experience testing the emissivity of materials. Like Sears, Solis got to stretch his on-the-fly innovation skills by making a digital model of a new holder for samples being tested in the UV-Vis spectrometer, which is used to study the properties of materials.
“It’s a very particular machine that’s usually made for liquid samples. But in this case, we wanted to test solid samples, so I created a model of a sample holder that could better accommodate solids,” Solis says.
Solis returned to UNT this fall to begin work on his master’s degree in mechanical and energy engineering while Sears is applying for research jobs in the aerospace industry.
“In the future, I want to be able to find a novel method of propulsion to enhance how we explore space and reach farther beyond our solar system,” Solis says. “Propulsion is all about heat transfer and fluid mechanics, which is what I’m learning about in Dr. Zhang’s lab and part of the project I got to work on at NASA this summer, so this is definitely a step in the right direction for me.”