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Handheld lunar navigation

Glove-operable hardware, built and evaluated at prototype scale.

Internship and capstone · 2026–

Handheld lunar navigation device

A handheld navigation device for astronauts in pressurized gloves. I built the first prototype in about two weeks at CesiumAstro.

I handled requirements, component selection, enclosure design and fabrication, wiring, the ESP32 C++ firmware and functional testing.

Encoder input and display refresh were interfering with each other, so I separated input handling from the display refresh to keep the encoder responsive.

Status: I tested the controls with pressurized gloves in a NASA JSC glove box in July 2026. That was a usability check, not flight qualification. A UT capstone team is now building an engineering model.

Seth Cohen reaching into a clear pressurized glove box at NASA Johnson Space Center, using astronaut gloves to handle the prototype while engineers in the lab look on.
Glove-box session, NASA Johnson Space Center, July 2026.
Capstone details

Pressurized gloves sharply reduce dexterity, so every control and readout had to work for a gloved hand. The prototype uses an ESP32 microcontroller, displays and a rotary encoder.

The capstone is sponsored by CesiumAstro. Our team is setting thermal, structural and glove-interface requirements and planning thermal and structural analyses, materials trade studies and environmental tests. The engineering model is not flight hardware.