UAH grad student Neil Laya receives NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities Fellowship

Neil Laya, an aerospace engineering graduate student at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), has received a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO) Fellowship to help pursue his goal of revolutionizing space travel.

“This is a huge deal for me. It means I’m funded for four more years,” says Laya, who received his bachelor’s degree in 2022 from UAH, a part of the University of Alabama System. “I had started in my master’s program. Getting this fellowship has allowed me to begin pursuing my doctorate.”

The NSTGRO Fellowship is sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission directorate to help U.S. citizen and permanent resident graduate students “contribute to NASA’s goal of creating innovative new space technologies for our nation’s science, exploration and economic future,” according to the NASA website.

Laya’s research involves magnetic reconnection, a physical process occurring in highly conducting plasmas in which magnetic energy is converted to kinetic energy, thermal energy and particle acceleration to produce thrust for space propulsion.

“The specific system that I’m working on has the potential, if given enough power in space, to become one of the highest-performing propulsion systems out there in terms of balancing high Isp, which is specific impulse, and the thrust levels,” Laya explains. “Most propulsion technologies either tend toward high thrust in terms of chemical rockets or high specific impulse in terms of electric propulsion.”

The ideal system, he says, would combine both.

“Developing that could be a huge gain to our spacecraft technology and general space travel for the world. The basic physics and the basic analyses done on this magnetic reconnection physics seem to indicate that those thrust and Isp levels are possible given the right engineering to harness that phenomenon.”

Laya works in UAH’s Plasma and Electrodynamics Research Lab (PERL), run by his advisor and mentor, Dr. Gabriel Xu, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the College of Engineering. Part of UAH’s Propulsion Research Center, PERL conducts research in plasma physics and electromagnetics for propulsion, materials, combustion, biomedical and energy.

Laya says Xu’s input was invaluable as he compiled the details of his research plan, including a feasible timeline and progress benchmarks, into a successful application.

“I made it very important to have benchmarks. Every time I’d reach a benchmark, I’d at least have something new, something useful for the science community and for the field.”

Another segment of the science community is pursuing a power source strong enough to sufficiently fuel Laya’s system.

“I’m interested in our gains in the fusion technology department,” he says. “We use charged capacitors to fire this device in pulses, and those require a ton of power, especially if we were to field this on a spacecraft scale. This would be the perfect propulsion system to take advantage of that near-limitless amount of power.”

Laya may have to wait on the perfect power source to make his propulsion dreams a reality, but the work he is doing can have other important uses.

“Even if our system does not yield a reasonable propulsion source, the internal physics of magnetic reconnection – especially three-dimensional magnetic reconnection – could be huge in terms of other fields as these effects happen in quasars, in solar flares, in interactions with the Earth’s ionosphere and magnetic fields. Everyone’s advances help each other in the field in some way.”