When SpaceXs Dragon capsule, loaded with supplies and experiments, docks with the International Space Station sometime Wednesday, a part from Olean will have made the trip.

Students in Jim Hilyers product design and manufacturing senior class at the Olean BOCES Career and Technical Education Center designed and manufactured part of the stainless steel latch assembly for a storage locker aboard SpaceX-11, which launched Sunday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The project was completed through High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware (HUNCH), an educational initiative started by Stacy Hale to give students the opportunity to create hardware with NASAs aid. NASA provides materials, equipment and mentoring to each of the HUNCH teams across the country so they can complete their projects to near-expert quality over the course of their studies.

Olean High School senior Korryn Martin served as the lead designer and programmer on this years project. She started with an original drawing of the part created in the 1980s as part of the space shuttle program which she used to develop a new, modified design. She explains the new drawing also involved changing some of the old coding.

Martin says she spent part or all of 20 classes on the project. In addition to creating the new drawing, she did all of the programming for the computer numeric control machining of the piece. Each piece takes about an hour to make on the machine, which uses three separate bits to slowly manufacture the part, taking 20/1,000ths off with each pass.

This project has been pretty interesting, Martin says. Im kind of interested in space, and ever since I was a young age, I have been interested in making or inventing something. So this project has brought both of those interests together.

Hale brought a storage locker to be used in the launch, about the size of a bread box, to the BOCES class so students could sign the locker with a special Sharpie.

It is cool that your signature is going to be out of this world, Hale told the students at the time.

Olean Mayor Bill Aiello was on hand, along with Joyce Louser, a representative of State Sen. Catharine Youngs office, who read a letter congratulating the class on its accomplishments.

The signatures will be short-lived, however, as once the items have been removed from the storage containers, the lockers are usually jettisoned and burn up upon re-entry into the earths atmosphere.

Hale says the storage lockers weigh a little over 9 pounds, but each locker requires more than 170 pounds of raw materials to make. In addition to providing a valuable learning experience for the students, the HUNCH program has saved NASA a lot of money, he says.

Before HUNCH, Lockheed wanted to charge NASA $1 million to make 20 of the storage lockers, he says. That is about $50,000 each. We probably make them for less than $4,000.

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Hilyer, the BOCES teacher, says the NASA HUNCH program has been great for our CTE students, giving them the opportunity to work on real-world projects that incorporate CAD, CNC programming and machining. Its also great that our students can put on their resume that theyve created parts for NASA.

Several students from the Olean BOCES classes plan to attend a HUNCH ceremony April 22 at the Plum Brook Station, a remote test facility for the NASA Glenn Research Center located in Sandusky, Ohio.

Meanwhile, Martins mother, Kristina Capizzi, says her daughter struggled in school but has been much more interested since she started attending the CTE Center as a junior last year.

For her part, Martin agrees.

I am planning to move to Florida after graduation, she says. I am thinking of possibly taking a two-year course in programming or CAD design.

Elon Musks SpaceX developed the Dragon rocket and capsule as a private contractor working with NASA.

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State & Union: Part from local BOCES on way to space station ... - Olean Times Herald