Professor Mike Wirthlin and graduate students Patrick Ostler and Nathan Rollins gave "The World is Our Campus" broader meaning Monday when they projected their schoolwork into outer space on the shuttle Endeavor.
The team, led by associate BYU professor Michael Wirthlin, designed the circuit to help make NASA technology more reliable. The circuit resides inside a chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The FPGA chip is programmed remotely, allowing those on the ground to operate the chip and collect data from the shuttle.
"It is a really unique opportunity for our students to design a circuit that can go up in space," Wirthlin said in a statement released by the university.