Above: PISCES Director Rodrigo Romo holds a feather-light rover wheel during a tour of NASA’s Glenn Research Center as part of the ASCE Earth & Space Conference held in Cleveland in April.
PISCES staff spent much of April traveling across the country to attend top aerospace conferences and forge new partnerships.
Director Rodrigo Romo and Geologist Kyla Edison attended the ASCE Earth & Space Conference in Cleveland, Ohio at the beginning of the month where they met with key researchers and scientists from around the world. Romo and Edison presented PISCES’ applied research work on Hawaiian basalt as a viable material for ISRU (in-situ resource utilization) manufacturing, highlighting its chemical profile as ideal for planetary analog testing and continuous basalt fiber production.
Romo and Operations Manager Christian Andersen flew to Colorado several days after Earth & Space to make connections at the 34th Space Symposium held in Colorado Springs. Romo and Andersen teamed up with the Executive Director of the Hawaii Economic Development Board (HIEDB), Jacqui Hoover, to represent aerospace opportunities in Hawaii during the conference—considered a pivotal forum in aerospace. The event attracts aerospace industry leaders, business developers, military, multinational companies and both domestic and foreign government agencies to discuss the future of space exploration from a business and policy standpoint.