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NASA dreams could come true for Milford high school student

MILFORD — A junior, from Platt Technical High School, in Milford, who has always dreamed of working for NASA, will have his opportunity for a job intervie...

MILFORD -- A junior, from Platt Technical High School, in Milford, who has always dreamed of working for NASA, will have his opportunity for a job interview, of sorts.

Ethan Feldman, a junior in the schools Information Systems Technology program, competed in a contest through NASA that started with 173 teams submitting ideas.

"The whole point of it is to get students from around the United States to participate in projects that they need to be done at NASA," Feldman said Wednesday morning.

Essentially, it's for software and hardware creations. Ethan, as an individual, is one of 10 teams named as finalists.

"My project is an object identification tool," Feldman said. You, you need something portable that the astronauts can use."

Software that an astronaut would have on his or her phone, while working in the international space station.

"You have a bunch of tools that look exactly the same," Feldman said. "The astronaut would hold up their phone to it and it would tell them what the tool is used for."

Ethan feels one of the strengths of his software design is that it will have real world applications.

"I actually made a way to train different objects," he says. "So, anyone could take it to their house, take a few pictures of the things that they want and they could use it on their own time."

And, it even correctly identified a piece of our television equipment: a tripod.

"It takes the pixels from the camera and it ends up turning it into a bunch of numbers<" said Feldman. "Those numbers are run through a giant equation."

"Anytime you can put a camera on a piece of equipment and identify the equipment with a high degree of accuracy, hey, the world is your oyster," said Tom Viola Platt Tech's Department Head for Information Systems Technology.

The 10 finalists will make their presentation to NASA on April 16 in Houston. Ethan was part of a team that was also a finalist last year.

GoFundMe site https://www.gofundme.com/f/lone-platt-tech-student-prevails-over-173-teams

 

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