When future moon colonists play around their lunar homes, they can thank six Carthage College students for their outer space abode.

The crew from Kevin Crosby’s physics class worked alongside astronauts, engineers and other collegians at the NASA Space Center March 25 to April 4 in Houston, Texas, where they experimented on the “dynamic angle of repose” of lunar soil under micro-gravity conditions.

In simpler Earth words, they had to vacuum all air out of metal drums to simulate the vacuum of space, then slowly rotate finely ground dirt and sand resembling lunar dust to see how they tumbled down a slope. The data will help engineers who may someday dig trenches and build structures on the moon, making sure their foundations are secure.

“I think NASA likes working with college students because we’re more optimistic, and it’s good for them because it’s free research. They don’t have all the resources and money to do these projects, plus they get to find up-and-coming researchers,” said Caitlin Pennington, 22, a Carthage senior.

She was joined by fellow seniors Erin Martin and Joe Monegato, and juniors Isa Fritz, Brad Frye and Samantha Kreppel, all 21.

Besides working and demonstrating experiments, they got to try it out while simulating space-like, zero-gravity conditions in an aircraft.

“That’s the most amazing part. That never gets old and something you remember forever,” Fritz said.

Martin added: “I did that last year, too, and I wanted to remember it, but it goes by so quickly.”

The experiments almost didn’t happen at all.

You can’t just use any, old drum and any old contraption to do space-age work, and the group worked for months to build their machine — three cylinders for the project and an apparatus that would create a vacuumed, airless seal. They took it to a local UPS mailing center in town who advertised he could build a crate to ship it safely to Houston.

“I think the UPS guy was a little angry at us,” Kreppel said. “When we dropped it off, he was upset he had to build the crate.”

Without their knowledge and after they left, he took apart their machine and, while drilling holes for the crate, burrowed into one of the cylinders.

“We opened it up when we got there and were furious,” Pennington said.

Even Frye, normally quiet and focused, almost lost his cool. Almost.

“Luckily Sam and I were in a meeting when it arrived or we would have freaked out,” Martin said. “We could tell on Brad’s face that he was worried.”

They worked 12-hour days at NASA and back at their hotel to make repairs, Crosby said, and the punctured cylinder was ruined.

“We adapted and used (the damaged one) as our control cylinder,” he said. “They’ve all seen (the movie) ‘Apollo 13.’ Things go wrong so you have to adapt. Every time you go into space, you run into a do-or-die predicament.”

Another highlight was meeting honest-to-goodness astronauts. They worked alongside Barbara Morgan, who was Christa McAuliffe’s back-up for the doomed Challenger space shuttle flight, and Sandra Magnus, who recently returned from working on the international space station.

Meeting Morgan was the realization of a dream-come-true for Pennington, who was just accepted to a master’s program for nuclear engineering.

“That was the highlight,” she said. “I heard about her in elementary school when we talked about the space program. She’s a teacher and she’s pretty passionate about what she does.”

Some might use lofty terms like “priceless” while describing the adventure.

Not Crosby.

“I can put a price on it,” he said with a chuckle: “$7,500 and counting.”

The Wisconsin Space Consortium, Carthage Student Government and the school itself, kicked in thousands to make the trip a reality.

“The benefit,” Crosby said, “is this whole time you’re working with experienced researchers at this high level, and you’re learning much more than you would in an artificial environment of a classroom.”