By Lucy Wang
A capstone partnership between UC Berkeley and NASA gave Berkeley Master of Engineering students (MEng) the chance to work on a real-world project tied to future space missions. This project paired Berkeley MEng students Annika Jansen, Gregory Wong, and Shreya Walavalkar with NASA research center engineer Dr. Lauren Abbott to develop protective coatings for a flexible heat shield material.
Featured: Shreya Walavalkar, Gregory Wong, Annika Jansen
The heat shield, developed by NASA, is made of a bendable carbon fabric that can deploy in space for sample capture and return missions. However, atomic oxygen in low Earth orbit degrades the material over time, limiting how long the heat shield can remain operational in space. The Berkeley team spent the year developing antioxidant coatings that could protect the fabric without compromising its flexibility.
For Abbott, one of the most valuable parts of this project was the partnership with the students. “We work with a lot of students at NASA, and we really enjoy the energy they bring to projects,” she says. “The capstone was a full year of that — lots of energy and new ideas,” Abbott says that students brought in new and valuable perspectives alongside the facilities available at Berkeley. The collaboration also gave the students a firsthand look at how engineering decisions are made in industry.
“[We] worked with real mission timelines and objectives, which differed significantly from a typical school research project,” Walavalkar says.
“Instead of focusing only on technical performance, the project also had to consider scalability, manufacturability, and the realities of carrying a mission from initial design to final implementation.”
The balance between innovation and practicality was not easy to achieve. Abbott says one of the most difficult aspects was evaluating novel ideas while keeping mission constraints in mind.“Sometimes it’s nice to look at the fancy new things, but those are not always ready for prime time,” she says.
“When we’re looking at missions in the near term, we really need to balance that and make sure the solutions are cost-effective and can scale to the large heat shields that we work on.”
Throughout the year, the team also faced unexpected setbacks. “One of the biggest takeaways from this experience was the importance of communication across all stakeholders and teams involved in the project,” Wong says. “The team faced challenges clarifying objectives and coordinating responsibilities early on.” He reflected that the project encountered delays securing lab access and coordinating responsibilities, while a government shutdown during the first semester temporarily cut off communication with NASA and forced the students to adapt quickly.
For the students, working with NASA also reshaped how they viewed engineering more broadly. “While NASA is widely seen as a highly prestigious institution, the experience revealed how mission-focused and practical the organization is. The team worked with real mission timelines and objectives, which differed significantly from a typical school research project. Instead of focusing only on technical performance, the project also had to consider scalability, manufacturability, and the realities of carrying a mission from initial design to final implementation,” Walavalkar notes.
By the end of the year, the Berkeley team identified promising candidates in both atomic oxygen resistance and flexibility preservation.
NASA hopes to continue building on that work through future testing, which includes a Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE), which would expose them directly to the space environment. Abbott says the students’ work laid important groundwork for future exploration.
Partnerships like this demonstrate the mutual value of collaboration between industries and universities.
“It’s always great to be able to connect with strong academic institutions that have great expertise and facilities, and to work with some of the best students we can find,” Abbott says.
“Bringing in their energy and ideas is incredibly valuable, and hopefully we’ll cross paths again one day at a NASA facility or somewhere in the aerospace community.”
Interested in learning more about the MEng Partnership Program that helped bring this project to life?