Two minutes

Iowa State intern helps prepare for NASA moon mission

Cory Simon had a hand, literally, in the U.S. space program. As an intern the past two springs and summers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Simon helped develop a prototype wrist-mounted control panel that astronauts will use to interact with robots when humans return to the moon in 2020.

Shuttling around: The senior computer engineering major from Winterset has completed 16 months of co-op education experiences through NASA's Johnson Space Center. He accompanied two other NASA team members to Kennedy Space Center in Florida to help install a new digital video recorder on the space shuttle Atlantis. And he helped inspect the wiring on the space shuttle Discovery.

Back on campus: Simon received several awards during his NASA experience. On campus, he's a National Merit Scholar who's active in two engineering honor societies, the National Society of Collegiate Leaders, Habitat for Humanity and several youth mentoring programs.

Congrats from an astronaut: Those efforts earned him ISU's inaugural Sesquicentennial Learning to Live a Life Leadership Award. Fittingly, ISU alumnus and astronaut Clayton Anderson watched Simon receive the award. Anderson was on campus to take part in the spring festival Veishea and sesquicentennial activities.

-- Mike Ferlazzo