Hi, I'm Kate Young, and you're listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these boiler makers? Join me as we feature students, faculty and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. The reputation that Purdue has to get you confident and able to do the work that is best in the world is unparalleled.  I was so excited to be there when it really is just such a huge opportunity to take advantage of this major benefit that the state of Indiana offers you. Many people across the world know the strong ties between Purdue University and space. Thanks to one of Purdue's most famous alumni, Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon. Purdue now has 27 astronauts in our cradle, and nearly one-third of all U.S. spaceflights have included a Purdue graduate. For Purdue alumna Amy Ross, NASA and human spaceflight is an all-in-the-family venture. Her dad, Jerry Ross, graduated from Purdue with a bachelor's and master's in mechanical engineering and served in the Air Force before eventually becoming a NASA astronaut. Jerry later set records by flying on seven shuttle missions and performing nine spacewalks. And Amy followed in her dad's footsteps. She attended Purdue and has been working for NASA for nearly three decades. She shares a few different paths she was interested in during high school and what ultimately made her want to join the Boilermaker community. Oh, and you'll hear Amy discuss her love for animals, and a certain little one joined her on her This is Purdue virtual interview. So really, we had two guests, NASA's space suit engineer Amy Ross and her kitten. What made you want to go to Purdue? Well, when I was in high school, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do. And I knew I wanted to do something that I would enjoy. And so I thought about the things that I enjoy. I love animals, so I thought about being a veterinarian. I read a lot, so I thought about being a librarian. And then my dad has always been deeply involved in the space program and I loved the enthusiasm he had for it. I loved what the space program does for the country. I thought that that was a very meaningful place to spend my career. And so those were the three options I had. I worked at a vet clinic one summer and not knowing any better as a 17 year old. I thought small animal clinic isn't for me. So I didn't know that I could drive to Houston and be a zoo vet or something. I just, we didn't do that at the time. We didn't drive that far to go to work. So I kicked that option out. But it's probably okay because I am a bleeding heart for animals. And I'd probably get myself in all kinds of fixes trying to help all kinds of animals if I were a veterinarian. You'd have 20 dogs at this point. Well, right now I've got a bunch of cats. Oh my gosh. This is thunder and he's five weeks old. Oh, yeah, he's tiny. Yeah, he's here because I have his bottle and he might want it soon. Well, that's interesting that you weeded things out at least you gave it a try and then, you know, knew that that wasn't for you. Did your dad have any sway and like I really want you to go to Purdue. I want you to take after me or it was at your own decision. Now they were actually really open to what university I wanted to choose. And so back in the day, we had books of all the different universities and reading through them. Columbia really appealed to me till I realized where it was. And then I looked at Texas schools as well. They're close, maybe a little too close to my parents. One of the universities rice that I was interested in is 45 minutes door to door with my folks. And I thought that could cause trouble. And then I went with my dad to talk that he was doing and got to spend some time at Purdue in January and just still hanging out in the student union. It just it felt right. Of course, my parents were supportive as they love Purdue, but very much that was my own decision to make. Now when I decided I want to be an engineer and work for the space program, it didn't hurt that Purdue has that excellent engineering program that it does. I thought I was going to be a mission controller, you know, people sit mission control and help fly the vehicles turned out differently. But when I decided that that meant get an engineering degree, get up to the cooperative education program at the time and then get into NASA. The co-op program Amy just mentioned allows students to alternate semesters between studying at Purdue and working in industries of their choice, which gives students both an academic foundation and real world work experience. And NASA co-ops are unique. Students can work within different divisions so they can find the right fit. So I got an undergraduate degree and a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue. I did the cooperative education program throughout the entire time. So I did seven kind of plus tours as a student. And Amy points out that although the book work of engineering may deter some people from going into a STEM related career, it's important to expose young people to experiences where they can learn hands-on and in person, such as space and robotics camps, instead of just being behind a computer. I do think that folks who are introduced to it earlier, the robotics programs, I'm not a raw gal, but I see how those programs get people involved. The book work of engineering is sometimes what turns some people off of going into STEM, but the doing of engineering, the building things, the thinking about how to make something, that's fun. And I think a lot more opportunities like that are helpful. You know, I've been exposed to space camp and Challenger centers and those kinds of things. So the doing of it is fun. I think also that trying to get more education about just what you can do with the degrees matters, because I honestly thought maybe I'd be sitting in front of a computer aided drafting program or something. I didn't know what different kinds of things engineers could do. And honestly, the technical side of it, while I understand it and I need it, I enjoy the running of a team more and the strategy of where we need to go, what technologies we need to develop more than sometimes doing the actual number crunching and that kind of work. So I think folks being aware that those opportunities are there with STEM, because I think some people who have those kinds of biases would prefer business degrees, not knowing any better and knowing that engineering degrees can let you do those cool, making stuff things without necessarily being the number cruncher all day is important to communicate. Sure. Amy looked up to her dad and his extensive career as a NASA astronaut, but I was curious if anything else led her to choose this career path. Was there anyone when you were growing up in the astronauts or anyone in NASA besides your dad that you really looked up to or saw them on TV and was like, someday I want to be them or be at NASA with them. That's an interesting question. I asked Bernie Horgan a question similar and she had this exact moment when she was watching a mission and she just knew that's what she wanted to do. So I was curious if you had a similar experience like that. I think maybe dad's enthusiasm for one. So dad had a big piece in it. But we did things like launch smaller rockets. We went out and looked at the constellations so we could name them and know which ones were which. And our community here is just elbow to elbow people who work for NASA. And so in Sunday school class at school, I got to meet people whose parents did different aspects of the NASA jobs. And so you didn't get a whole lot of mileage out of being an astronaut's kid because the kid next door, their dad is a flight director and there's fewer flight directors than there are astronauts. So why do you think you're cool? And I'm not cool. My dad's cool. Yeah. I'm just a kid trying to figure out what I want to do. So just seeing that variety of people who do that work and being at parties, I don't know that I have any single event, but just the whole experience of knowing what the NASA community and space community were like, I think pulled me in as much as anything. So Amy graduated from Purdue and joined NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston full time. Her first big project, developing spacesuit gloves. Amy worked with her mentor, legendary spacesuit designer Joe Cosmo, who retired from NASA with 50 years of experience working on spacesuits. She tells us what went into creating these next level gloves. I worked with a gentleman in the advanced spacesuit team that was just Joe Cosmo, my mentor, and then me and the team at the time. He'd been working for a decade on developing new gloves. My job was really to take a pair of gloves that we'd gotten to a very high level of performance and then get certified to fly on the shuttle at the time. So that's what I did. I took those prototype gloves and flew them in space, which is a big deal too. There's a lot of work that goes into. And how long did that project take? I mean, I'm sure that wasn't just a quick turn thing, right? Yeah, no. It took over a year and a half to get the gloves certified to fly in space. And then I was the lead for the station, well, the shuttle gloves for about three years after that. The first astronaut Amy and Joe's gloves would be tested on? Well, it was none other than her dad, Jerry Ross. Amy says her dad used to joke with her at family dinners. Where are my gloves? When will they be ready? Once the gloves passed certification, Jerry was able to test them out in a 1999 shuttle mission where he performed three spacewalks. He even took a minute to share his praise and gratitude for the new gloves on TV during his spacewalk as Amy watched it all unfold. You know, now I've read articles that you're working on these space suits and obviously technology has advanced and changed since you first created those gloves. What kinds of things are different this time around when you're building that whole suit and what remains kind of similar to when you were building those gloves? It's easier to say what's not changed and that's the human and how complicated the human body is and how amazing the human body is. So trying to replicate in a shell what the human body can do on a person is difficult. You know, we've all seen a lot of Iron Man and as fun as Hollywood makes that look, it's much more challenging when you put a basically scuba tank around a human and try to let them do their job easily and well. The things that have changed, a lot of the tools that we've used have changed. So I would say a lot of the modeling that we can do, a lot of the 3D printing we can do. So fast prototyping is how we primarily use that. Those things make my job more efficient so I can get to the same answer quicker with the new tools that we have when they needed a new suit to be built with tools and technologies and designs that we would want to use and know would be appropriate for the mission they want to do. In some ways that's a 25 plus year answer. And what about the team members who are working on these new spacesuit designs? Normally my team for our advanced work is pretty small. So maybe two, three engineers at NASA and then maybe some contractors and then like three or four technicians. When you're trying to build a flight suit, you need a lot more people. There's a lot more detailed work to do, a lot more to 100% complete work to do. And so we had over 80 people last time I counted it up. As you can imagine, working within NASA requires a lot of problem solving. Amy discusses some of the challenges she's faced in her career. Boilermakers always keep going and they're always pursuing their best selves. What was a challenge that you faced within your career that you overcame? There's been several carbon dioxide levels in the suit testing. We never get that done. And so there's always different ways to do it, different approaches. The life sciences guys change their mind on what they think is the right way to do it. And so just always trying to think about better. And so it gets really frustrating because you do the last time they thought it was good. And then they come back with an analysis that says it's not good because they've got a new way to analyze it. And that's been a career long effort. I've gone through probably about six different ways of doing carbon dioxide testing. So persistence counts. You just got to keep at it. Be open to new ideas, understand why the change is there. We do get better because of those changes, but it does take some persistence to just keep at it. And realize, okay, we just did this big test and now we're going to do it all over again. Also, the constellation program with advanced suit work, it's an up and down kind of a situation. A program where it started like the constellation program and then a program will end like the constellation program. And so we had a big team going where we're getting a lot of progress made. And all of a sudden change of administration's program was ended and all that work just kind of gets shelved. And there's just a few people like me that's still there that remembers what we did. They can carry that information, that knowledge that we gained forward. But we were excited to build a suit and fly it and then we didn't get to. Will that suit ever be used in the future or it's just something that you have to accept and then move to a different way of thinking and creating it? Yeah. So that particular suit won't be used. Different requirements, different style of mission. Suit design is predicated on where you're going and what you're doing. And when they change where you're going and what you're doing, changes what the suit needs to be. And so the suit that we're working on now, the Exploration Extravigular Mobility Unit, or XCMU, has different requirements that mean it's a different looking suit. Recently, women and particularly women from Purdue have been trailblazers when it comes to space exploration. Purdue Professor Briney Horgan, for example, is one of the tactical science leads for NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. Be sure to check out Briney's This Is Purdue episode to learn more. And of course, there's Beth Moses and Sharisha Bandla, both part of Purdue's cradle of astronauts. In July 2021, at just 34 years old, Sharisha was one of four mission specialists on Virgin Galactic's Unity 22 suborbital flight. And Amy mentioned she is friends with Beth, who made history in 2019 with Virgin Galactic, becoming the first female commercial astronaut. Beth then made history again in 2021, joining Sharisha on the first ever fully crewed commercial space flight. I asked Amy about her thoughts on the increase of women's involvement in space exploration. What advice do you have for other female engineers who want to get into the space industry?  So go and do what you're going to do. Honestly, fortunately, I've had very little issue being a female engineer. I think I've had more issue being an introvert. As for the future of space exploration, the team at NASA has lofty goals. Amy shares what she's looking forward to in the next few years and her thoughts on private industry becoming more and more involved in space flight. When it comes to the space industry and the future, where do you think, you know, space is going to be in the future? And is there anything you're looking forward to in particular? I will say that the place right now where the private industry is getting much more capable and involved in space flight is interesting from the NASA side. You know, if I were just a person person, I think that that's very exciting. Do I want to be able to find space? I do. Do I have $250,000 to fly in space? You bet I don't. So I got to feed this little guy. So that's where my money goes. So that's not saving up to get a virgin galactic flight. But someday in the future, being able to share that experience with people, more people, I think is a good thing for the United States, for the world. Because I don't know a single crew member who has flown, who hasn't come back and really been in awe of our planet, the care we need to take of it, and how much it's a little tiny blue and green gem in the black, black, black emptiness of space. And so we breathe air every day. We drink water every day. We don't think a thing about it, but you try to make it happen somewhere where it doesn't want to be. It's hard. And so those things are precious and those things are things we need to take care of. And so that I think the more people that get that experience and have that appreciation, the better off the planet will be. And do you have any future project you're working on that you are able to share or something that you're looking forward to within the next few years? And I look forward to continuing my advanced spacesuit work. So I expect to keep working on new technologies that will help suits as we go forward into Mars. Probably I'll be focused more on Mars than Moon at this point. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, Purdue University is called the cradle of astronauts for good reason. I asked Amy about the Purdue community within NASA. Are there any engineers at NASA that went to Purdue with you or is there any type of Purdue community within NASA? There's a lot of us, yes. A while ago, we got a picture in Mission Control with all the Purdue engineers and some of the crew members. And gosh, I think it was the head of the station at the time, you know, some pretty big wigs in the Johnson Space Center and NASA community.  And so that's nice too. I've met a lot of good engineers from a lot of different schools, even some of those ones that we don't like to mission mention Michigan. But Big 10 is still good. But the coworkers that I have, the colleagues that I have that are Purdue graduates, you just know how they're going to be. You know that they're used to working hard. You know that they are going to solve problems. You know that they're prepared. And you know that they're good people. That's pretty universal. It's not a good old boys club, but it definitely makes you get to feel like family. And speaking of family, Dr. Bering was the president of Purdue when I was there. And one of the things he always said and tried to engender was that Purdue is a family. And that's very much part of how I felt while I was there. My nieces have gone to different universities. And I can tell you that the communication, the personal care that I had at Purdue. I don't think that they've had at their universities. You know, when I was in the mechanical school of mechanical engineering, I knew the secretary. I knew the cooperative education coordinator. I knew they were taking care of me. I knew they were helping me. I knew that they're going to make sure I had the classes I need to graduate. I felt very supported, very much like family. And I think that's what you used to. You take it for granted because that's not true for everywhere. And some of Amy's favorite moments at Purdue include a great balance of academics and athletics. I would say there's a few just all those long hours in the sub basement of Potter library, which isn't there anymore. The engineering library used to be studying with my study group. Just really is one of those memories that comes to mind. But I think about Purdue as the roar of the crowd at Macchi Arena as we headed toward in the final second.  On this podcast, we hear from all different guests on how Purdue prepared them to serve in our country's military or win an Olympic gold medal or create a record breaking paint to combat climate change. For Amy, it's all about that boiler maker. I can and I will attitude. How do you think Purdue prepared you for a career at NASA? Yeah, well, it's the bottom line. I think, you know, we were just talking about this with my coworker today. It isn't all that bookwork that you do it. It's not all that homework that you do as important as it is, because that's exercising your mind and teaching you tools, which you need. But it's the fact that you can fight through that, right? It's not easy. But if you get that degree, you've put in that work so you can solve those problems. You can figure it out. So you have that I'm capable and I'm going to do this attitude and that's how you get things done. It's not that's hard or I'm not sure how to do that or I don't want to work that hard to do that. It's I can and I will do this. I think one of the things that I was surprised about when I went to Purdue is how little understanding of what Purdue is and gives you and gives the world people in Indiana didn't have. They didn't understand what an asset Purdue is. Coming from here and seeing the people at work and meeting other engineers that worked at Purdue and, you know, my dad and his fellow astronauts that graduated from Purdue. The reputation that Purdue has to get you confident and able to do the work that is best in the world is unparalleled. And that people at Purdue were like, well, is here I use I came here, you know, it's closer to home.  I was so excited to be there. It really is just such a huge opportunity to take advantage of this major benefit that the state of Indiana offers you. That's so interesting. I graduated from Purdue 11 years ago. And when I came back to work here, I mean, I loved Purdue. I that was my number one choice and everything. But I'm from Indiana.  I mean, the things that we're doing, the stories that we're telling with the alumni. And I mean, I completely agree. We're more Midwesterners. We're humble. We're low key. It's been there. And it will be there. It's just kind of part of the landscape. And we don't think to celebrate those things like we, I think sometimes should because I'm telling you, I've been people from a lot of different universities, some that consider themselves better than Purdue. And I don't think that they're producing any better engineers than Purdue. And definitely sometimes better coworkers. Yeah, we all know how to work as a team and be a family. Yes. Indiana prizes being able to think and use your brain and do real stuff. When it gets down to it, we're doing real stuff and you better be able to think. If you're enjoying our This is Purdue podcast episodes, please be sure to leave us a review on Apple podcast and share our show with a friend. And if you'd like to read more on all of Purdue's ties to the space industry, head over to purdue.edu slash space. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu slash podcast. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up.


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Hey everyone, before we get into this video, I wanna remind you that we are on our road to 100,000 subscribers. If we can get there by the time Tears of the Kingdom comes out, we'll give away a collector's edition of Tears of the Kingdom.  Hopefully we get there. So why not subscribe to the channel and let's get into this news. So, the Nintendo Switch 2, right? We've been talking quite a bit about it. Really, most of this year, I would say there's been at least murmurs. And our last video was on potential specs of the supposed chip set that leaked last year that has been directly linked to MVN. MVN 2, that is the T239, which is a new Tegra chip that is based on the Oren chip. It's like a newer version of the Oren chip that was really a successor to the original Tegra X1, but is used in smart cars and stuff like that. They use it in Teslas and things like that. I don't know if it's Tesla specifically using this chip, but it's, you know, those electric cars and all that, using that stuff. What's interesting, of course, is finding out some real information about what's happening with this chip. And I need to give a huge shout out to YouTuber DocTray81 because this guy, man, he is scouring those LinkedIn profiles of employees at companies like it's nobody's business. He's always one of the first people to discover things. And what he discovered was this employee, a physical design engineer, who now currently works at Intel, okay? He works at Intel currently. But in his design profile, it shows that he previously worked for NVIDIA or worked at NVIDIA on the T239 project. Now, what company did he specifically work for inside NVIDIA? Well, he worked for Siliconis Technologies. Well, what is Siliconis Technologies? What do they do with NVIDIA? They actually specialize in providing on-site support for all tape out critical tasks. And for those that don't know what a tape out is, it means the chip is done and they're basically helping to get ready for mass manufacturing, right? That's the layman's way of looking at it. If something's being taped out, it's finalized, it's done, and they're getting it through the manufacturing process. So then it can be mass manufactured. Now, him no longer working on that project, suggests that project's over and done with and hence he's moved on to other things. And this company specializing in that suggests if he worked specifically on this chip at this company that works for NVIDIA, then this is what he was responsible for, making sure this chip could get taped out and ready to go for mass manufacturing. Now, we don't know obviously when this person changed jobs, we just know that they're already done with it. So that would mean as of today, March 11th, March 10th, around the time he posted this video because he made it yesterday, sometime recently that chip has been done and has entered mass production. And because that chip is really the chip behind the Nintendo Switch 2, it's been, the NVIDIA leaks made it pretty clear that that is the case. Well, folks, that would suggest that Nintendo Switch 2 is or has answered mass production. Now you take that for what you will.  And we learned from that person, we talked about this in a different video, that while they have increased orders for the Switch OLED now, those orders are more than halved next month and that later this year, they're gonna stop making Nintendo Switch components altogether for the current Switch, for the version 2 Switch. When that's what the Switch Lite, that's what the OG Switch and Switch OLED are, they're all working on the version 2 chip. Not the first Tegra X1 chip, but the slightly modified one with a little bit better battery life, but also fixes the easy way that you could cross pins and hack the old systems. So what's interesting here, of course, is if you combine the news that they basically said, hey, we're gonna slow down on this, but we're actually gonna ramp up production on something new for Nintendo. That's what we heard out of China. And then that's happening this year. And then you're hearing from this person that, hey, they used to work at this company, he worked on the tape out process for the T239, which means it's done and ready to go. Yeah, the Nintendo Switch 2 at some point this year, if not already has entered mass production. Why would it be entering mass production right now? Seems like that leans towards a holiday 2023 release. Again, speculating, it's not for sure, but it seems, it seems like that is the case. I don't know 1000% obviously what's gonna happen. All I can say, all I can say is I'm ready, man. I think a lot of us have been ready for maybe a year or two. A lot of people watching this video, if you're watching this video, you've probably been following this information all along. And again, big shout out to DocTray81. I'm just ready. Look, whether it's this year or next year, none of us really, really know. Only Nintendo, Ndidiya probably knows as well. And the manufacturing plants involved making the stuff, obviously they know too. I just find it fascinating that we're entering this period where everything seems to be stacking up for either a holiday release this year or sometime in 2024. Remember, entering mass production now, they can obviously bank up units and save it for a 2024 launch. They don't have to launch a product now just because the product's being put in the mass manufacturing this year, right? They could have it in mass manufacturing to bank up units for the launch period next year because what is mass manufacturing? Does that mean they're making 10 million units this year or are they just making like 500,000, you know? And then they'll just keep ramping that up till they have a couple of million for launch next year, right? Because they're still making the current switch. Those switch lines aren't shut down yet. Even though we have a report that one of the major switch lines will be shut down at some point later this year to shift over to manufacturing this, it's still one of those things where, but until then they're still making switches, right? So I don't know what this means other than by the end of 2024, we should have a switch too here. Whatever they call it, it might not be a switch. They can brand it whatever they want, but it's coming, it's happening. And for those curious, yes, this chip works directly in line with the chips that we've had on the switch, which would suggest this is probably another hybrid device. So I'm just throwing that out there as well, not that there was any doubt that some people still were hoping like, oh, Nintendo is gonna make a traditional home console right now. I don't know if Nintendo is ever gonna do that again. If I'm being just completely frank with you, I don't see Nintendo doing that, but who knows, time will tell. You let me know what you think about this down in the comments below, because I'm very curious, like having direct evidence that this is entering manufacturing is huge, because before it was just like, oh, we speculate, we think, there's reports. Now we have proof that the chip has been taped out, which means it's entering mass manufacturing. When, don't know, it happened obviously already, it's already been done. So how long it's been in production for, how long they've been mass manufacturing it, how many other components for the next switch are being mass manufactured, we don't know. But we just know that this is coming and it's coming fast. So let me know what you think about this down in the comments below. Are you ready to see what this new device has to offer? And when do you think Nintendo will unveil it? Do you think it's coming next year? Do you think it's coming this year? Do you have a specific time period? Do you think Nintendo is going to announce it? How are they gonna announce it? Are they gonna tease an announcement event ahead of time? Is it only gonna be like a normal Nintendo Direct 24-hour noticing? Are they just gonna drop a random trailer on a Tuesday and, hey, here's that new device and you're like, wait, what? Or will they plan a big media event around it? Let me know. I'll catch you guys in that next video.