Three Hawaii girls impress at NASA

By Lia Kamanā

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    KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii (KITV) — First stop Houston, Texas. Next stop, the moon. That’s the potential for an idea brought to life by three Hawaii teens.

Anja Henriques, Mikaella Casino, and Lynelle Yadao-Ellazar captured the interests of NASA with their lunar habitat chair.

“We based the idea on the neutral position in space, since when the body is in space, your body gets messed up a bit and gets compromised with all the fluids,” said Casino. “Your posture is really bad because there is no gravity.”

The three seniors at Makua Lani Christian Academy traveled to NASA Headquarters in Houston in April, to present their prototype as finalists in the NASA HUNCH Engineering Program.

“How they choose these projects is they talk to astronauts and other engineers to find out what they need up there,” said Henriques. “Then they throw these ideas to us high school students and give us a shot at it and see if we can come up with something great.”

And they did come up with something great. Their chair is specially designed for use in a moon base.

The chair has two different positions, the working position and the traditional position. The traditional position is like a traditional chair, with a back rest, arm rest, and a seat. But the students explained, the working position is a kneeling chair.

“The seat goes up at an angle, the back rest swivels down to become a knee pad, and you are learning forward,” explained Henriques.

The seniors worked all year on the project in their school’s aerospace club, and say it wasn’t always easy.

“With a prototype like this you obviously have to experiment a lot and there’s a lot of times where I was like ‘I’m so done with this; I am quitting aerospace. I am so over it.’ said Henriques.

But they shared, they learned some good lessons along the way.

“A long the way we had a lot of mentors guiding us and helping us,” said Yadao-Ellazar. “We were encouraged to fail and play around and not be afraid of the possibilities.”

Casino added that she learned to step out of her comfort zone, “even though you think it’s not going to work out, maybe it will.”

NASA engineers could use the girls’ prototype in future lunar habitations as part of NASA’s Artemis Program.

Right now, the seniors don’t have plans to become space engineers or astronauts themselves. Henriques and Casino will be studying nursing next year at Grand Canyon University in Ariz. Yadao-Ellazar will also be attending Grand Canyon University next year, studying digital film and screenwriting.

But they did say, if NASA calls, they’ll be there.

“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, when you got a shot, you take it, see where it takes you,” said Yadao-Ellazar.

Casino added, “It’s NASA so I feel like it’s a win-win. Can’t really say no.”

In 2022, the same team was a finalist for the NASA HUNCH program with a prototype of a lunar habitat shoe.

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