“One of many desires I had as a child was in regards to the first day of college, and with the ability to construct and be inventive, and it was the happiest day of my life. And at MIT, I felt like that dream grew to become actuality,” says Ballesteros. Credit score: Ryan A Lannom, Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
By Jennifer Chu
Rising up within the suburban city of Spring, Texas, simply exterior of Houston, Erik Ballesteros couldn’t assist however be drawn in by the probabilities for people in house.
It was the early 2000s, and NASA’s house shuttle program was the primary transport for astronauts to the Worldwide Area Station (ISS). Ballesteros’ hometown was lower than an hour from Johnson Area Middle (JSC), the place NASA’s mission management heart and astronaut coaching facility are primarily based. And as usually as they may, he and his household would drive to JSC to take a look at the middle’s public reveals and displays on human house exploration.
For Ballesteros, the spotlight of those visits was at all times the tram tour, which brings guests to JSC’s Astronaut Coaching Facility. There, the general public can watch astronauts take a look at out spaceflight prototypes and follow numerous operations in preparation for dwelling and dealing on the Worldwide Area Station.
“It was a extremely inspiring place to be, and generally we might meet astronauts after they have been doing signings,” he recollects. “I’d at all times see the gates the place the astronauts would return into the coaching facility, and I’d suppose: At some point I’ll be on the opposite aspect of that gate.”
Right this moment, Ballesteros is a PhD scholar in mechanical engineering at MIT, and has already made good on his childhood aim. Earlier than coming to MIT, he interned on a number of tasks at JSC, working within the coaching facility to assist take a look at new spacesuit supplies, moveable life assist programs, and a propulsion system for a prototype Mars rocket. He additionally helped practice astronauts to function the ISS’ emergency response programs.
These early experiences steered him to MIT, the place he hopes to make a extra direct impression on human spaceflight. He and his advisor, Harry Asada, are constructing a system that may fairly actually present serving to fingers to future astronauts. The system, dubbed SuperLimbs, consists of a pair of wearable robotic arms that stretch out from a backpack, just like the fictional Inspector Gadget, or Physician Octopus (“Doc Ock,” to comedian e-book followers). Ballesteros and Asada are designing the robotic arms to be sturdy sufficient to raise an astronaut again up in the event that they fall. The arms may additionally crab-walk round a spacecraft’s exterior as an astronaut inspects or makes repairs.
Ballesteros is collaborating with engineers on the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to refine the design, which he plans to introduce to astronauts at JSC within the subsequent yr or two, for sensible testing and person suggestions. He says his time at MIT has helped him make connections throughout academia and in trade which have fueled his life and work.
“Success isn’t constructed by the actions of 1, however relatively it’s constructed on the shoulders of many,” Ballesteros says. “Connections — ones that you simply not simply have, however preserve — are so important to with the ability to open new doorways and maintain nice ones open.”
Getting a jumpstart
Ballesteros didn’t at all times hunt down these connections. As a child, he counted down the minutes till the top of college, when he may go residence to play video video games and watch motion pictures, “Star Wars” being a favourite. He additionally cherished to create and had a expertise for cosplay, tailoring intricate, life-like costumes impressed by cartoon and film characters.
In highschool, he took an introductory class in engineering that challenged college students to construct robots from kits, that they might then pit in opposition to one another, BattleBots-style. Ballesteros constructed a robotic ball that moved by shifting an inside weight, just like Star Wars’ fictional, sphere-shaped BB-8.
“It was an excellent introduction, and I keep in mind considering, this engineering factor might be enjoyable,” he says.
After graduating highschool, Ballesteros attended the College of Texas at Austin, the place he pursued a bachelor’s diploma in aerospace engineering. What would sometimes be a four-year diploma stretched into an eight-year interval throughout which Ballesteros mixed faculty with a number of work experiences, taking up internships at NASA and elsewhere.
In 2013, he interned at Lockheed Martin, the place he contributed to varied facets of jet engine improvement. That have unlocked various different aerospace alternatives. After a stint at NASA’s Kennedy Area Middle, he went on to Johnson Area Middle, the place, as a part of a co-op program referred to as Pathways, he returned each spring or summer time over the subsequent 5 years, to intern in numerous departments throughout the middle.
Whereas the time at JSC gave him an enormous quantity of sensible engineering expertise, Ballesteros nonetheless wasn’t certain if it was the precise match. Alongside along with his childhood fascination with astronauts and house, he had at all times cherished cinema and the particular results that cast them. In 2018, he took a yr off from the NASA Pathways program to intern at Disney, the place he spent the spring semester working as a security engineer, performing security checks on Disney rides and points of interest.
Throughout this time, he received to know just a few folks in Imagineering — the analysis and improvement group that creates, designs, and builds rides, theme parks, and points of interest. That summer time, the group took him on as an intern, and he labored on the animatronics for upcoming rides, which concerned translating sure scenes in a Disney film into sensible, protected, and useful scenes in an attraction.
“In animation, a variety of issues they do are fantastical, and it was our job to discover a strategy to make them actual,” says Ballesteros, who cherished each second of the expertise and hoped to be employed as an Imagineer after the internship got here to an finish. However he had one yr left in his undergraduate diploma and needed to transfer on.
After graduating from UT Austin in December 2019, Ballesteros accepted a place at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He began at JPL in February of 2020, engaged on some final changes to the Mars Perseverance rover. After just a few months throughout which JPL shifted to distant work through the Covid pandemic, Ballesteros was assigned to a mission to develop a self-diagnosing spacecraft monitoring system. Whereas working with that workforce, he met an engineer who was a former lecturer at MIT. As a sensible suggestion, she nudged Ballesteros to contemplate pursuing a grasp’s diploma, so as to add extra worth to his CV.
“She opened up the thought of going to grad college, which I hadn’t ever thought-about,” he says.
Full circle
In 2021, Ballesteros arrived at MIT to start a grasp’s program in mechanical engineering. In interviewing with potential advisors, he instantly hit it off with Harry Asada, the Ford Professor of Enginering and director of the d’Arbeloff Laboratory for Data Methods and Know-how. Years in the past, Asada had pitched JPL an concept for wearable robotic arms to assist astronauts, which they rapidly turned down. However Asada held onto the thought, and proposed that Ballesteros take it on as a feasibility research for his grasp’s thesis.
The mission would require bringing a seemingly sci-fi concept into sensible, useful type, to be used by astronauts in future house missions. For Ballesteros, it was the right problem. SuperLimbs grew to become the main focus of his grasp’s diploma, which he earned in 2023. His preliminary plan was to return to trade, diploma in hand. However he selected to remain at MIT to pursue a PhD, in order that he may proceed his work with SuperLimbs in an surroundings the place he felt free to discover and take a look at new issues.
“MIT is like nerd Hogwarts,” he says. “One of many desires I had as a child was in regards to the first day of college, and with the ability to construct and be inventive, and it was the happiest day of my life. And at MIT, I felt like that dream grew to become actuality.”
Ballesteros and Asada are actually additional creating SuperLimbs. The workforce lately re-pitched the thought to engineers at JPL, who reconsidered, and have since struck up a partnership to assist take a look at and refine the robotic. Within the subsequent yr or two, Ballesteros hopes to convey a totally useful, wearable design to Johnson Area Middle, the place astronauts can try it out in space-simulated settings.
Along with his formal graduate work, Ballesteros has discovered a strategy to have a little bit of Imagineer-like enjoyable. He’s a member of the MIT Robotics Group, which designs, builds, and runs robots in numerous competitions and challenges. Inside this membership, Ballesteros has fashioned a sub-club of kinds, referred to as the Droid Builders, that purpose to construct animatronic droids from widespread motion pictures and franchises.
“I assumed I may use what I discovered from Imagineering and train undergrads learn how to construct robots from the bottom up,” he says. “Now we’re constructing a full-scale WALL-E that might be absolutely autonomous. It’s cool to see every part come full circle.”
MIT Information
