Growing up in the suburban city of Spring in Texas, on the outskirts of Houston, Erik Ballesteros could not not be caught by the capabilities of people in space.
It was the early 2000 years, and the NASA space ferry program was the main transport for astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The city of Ballesteros was less than an hour from the Johnson Space Center (JSC), where the NASA Mission Control Center and the Astronaut Training Center are based. And as often as possible, he and his family went to JSC to check the public exhibits and presentations of the center about the exploration of human space.
For Ballesteros, the most vital event of these visits was always tram routes, which leads visitors to the JSC Astronaut Training Center. There, society can watch astronauts testing prototypes in the field of space flights and practice various operations in preparation for life and work at an international space station.
“It was a really inspiring place, and sometimes we met astronauts when they made signatures,” he recalls. “I have always seen gates in which the astronauts returned to the training center and I would think: One day I will be on the other side of this gate.”
Today, Ballesteros is a PhD student in the field of mechanical engineering in MIT and has already achieved his childhood goal. Before coming to MIT, he interned many projects in JSC, working in a training center to facilitate test modern space materials, portable life support systems and a propulsion system for the MARS prototype rocket. He also helped to train astronauts in servicing the ISS emergency reaction systems.
These early experiences directed him to the myth, where he hopes to have a more direct influence on the human space flight. He and his adviser, Harry Assad, build a system that will literally provide helpful hands to future astronauts. The system, called Superlimbs, consists of a pair of robotic arms that stretch from a backpack, similar to the fictitious gadget inspector or doctor Octopus (“doc OCK” to comic fans). Ballesteros and Assad design robotic arms to make them forceful enough to raise the astronaut back if they fall. The arms can also walk a crab around the outer part of the spacecraft when the astronaut checks or repairs.
Ballesteros cooperates with engineers in the NASA Jet Propulsion laboratory to improve the project that it plans to present to astronauts in JSC in the following year or two, in order to conduct practical tests and feedback of users. He says that his time in myth helped him establish contacts in the academic environment and in the industry that fueled his life and work.
“Success is not built by the actions of one, but rather built on the shoulders of many,” says Ballesteros. “Connections – those that you not only have, but you keep – are so important to be able to open new doors and maintain a great opening.”
Receiving the hill
Ballesteros did not always look for these connections. As a child, he deducted minutes to the end of school, when he could go home to play video games and watch movies, “Star Wars” is a favorite. He also loved to create and had talent for cosplay, adapting complicated, similar lifelong costumes inspired by cartoon and film characters.
In high school he took part in the introductory class to engineering, which challenged students to build robots from sets, which they would then put against themselves, in the style of Battlebots. Ballesteros built a robotic ball that moved, changing internal weight, similar to the fictitious BB-8 in the shape of a sphere.
“It was a good introduction and I remember that I thought that this engineering could be fun,” he says.
After graduating from high school, Ballesteros attended the University of Texas in Austin, where he studied aerial engineering bachelor. What would usually be a four -year degree extended to an eight -year period, during which Ballesteros combined college with many professional experience, taking part in NASA internships and elsewhere.
In 2013, he moved in Lockheed Martin, where he contributed to various aspects of the development of jet engines. This experience has unlocked many other air possibilities. After a ride in Kennedy Space Center, NASA went to the Johnson Space Center, where as part of a cooperative program called Pathways, he returned every spring or summer in the next five years, to an internship in various faculties in the center.
While time in JSC gave him a huge practical engineering, Ballesteros was still not sure if it was a proper fit. Along with childhood fascination with astronauts and space, he always loved cinema and special effects that created them. In 2018, he took a year free from NASA Pathways for an intern in Disney, where he spent the spring semester working as a security engineer, performing safety control during Disney rides and attractions.
At that time, he met several people in their imagination – a group of research and development, which creates, designs and builds rides, amusement parks and attractions. This summer, the group took him as an intern and worked on Animatronics for the upcoming rides, which consisted in translating some scenes in the Disney movie into practical, unthreatening and functional scenes.
“In the animation, many things they do are fantastic and our task was to find a way to do them,” says Ballesteros, who loved every moment of this experience and hoped that he would be employed as imagination after an internship. But he had a year in bachelor’s studies and he had to go on.
After completing UT Austin in December 2019, Ballesteros took his position in Jet Propulsion NASA laboratory in Pasadna, California. He started in JPL in February 2020, working on some of the last adaptations to Mars Perseverance Rover. After a few months, during which JPL moved to distant work during Covid pandemic, Ballesteros was assigned to the project to develop a space ship monitoring system. While working with this team he met an engineer who was a former lecturer in myth. As a practical suggestion, Ballesteros was poisoned to consider his master’s degree to escalate his CV value.
“She opened the idea of going to school that I never considered,” he says.
Full circle
In 2021, Ballesteros arrived in myth to start a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. When interviewing potential advisers, he immediately hit him with Harry Asada, Professor Ford and director of the D’Albeloff laboratory for IT systems and technologies. Many years ago, Assad put JPL an idea for robotic shoulders to facilitate to facilitate astronauts they quickly rejected. But Assada kept this idea and suggested that Ballesteros recognized him as a feasibility study of a master’s thesis.
The project would require seemingly the introduction of science fiction in a practical, functional form, for employ by astronauts in future space missions. For Ballesteros it was a perfect challenge. Superlimbs became the subject of a master’s degree, which he earned in 2023. His initial plan was a return to industry, a rank in hand. But he decided to stay in the myth to continue his doctorate, so that he could continue working with superlimbas in an environment in which he could freely discover and try modern things.
“The myth is like Nerd Hogwarts,” he says. “One of the dreams that I had as a child concerned the first day of school and the possibility of building and creativity, and it was the happiest day in my life. And in myth I felt like this dream became a reality.”
Ballesteros and Assad are now developing Superlimbs. The team recently re -gave the idea of engineers from JPL, which he considered again, and since then hit the partnership to facilitate test and improve the robot. In the following year or two, Ballesteros hopes to bring fully functional, to wear the project to the Johnson Space Center, where astronauts can test it in the settings simulated in space.
In addition to the formal postgraduate work, Ballesteros found a way to have some fun. He is a member Mit Robotics teamwho designs, builds and conducts works in various professions and challenges. In this club, Ballesteros has created a kind of sub-club, called Droid Builders, whose goal is to build animatronic droids from popular films and franchises.
“I thought I could use what I learned from my imagination and teach students how to build robots from scratch,” he says. “Now we are building a full Wall-E scale, which can be fully autonomous. It is nice to see that everything is full.”