In New Agreement, Prisoners Building NASA Hardware

Inmates are escorted by a guard through San Quentin State Prison (Credits: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson).

According to a report by Space News, NASA’s Ames Research center has made arrangements for inmates at a local prison to build PPODs for the agency. PPODs, or PolyPicosatellite Orbital Deployers, are used to attach CubeSats to their launch vehicles.

The agreement is the brainchild of Ames director Pete Worden, known as something of an innovator and risk taker. As CubeSat inventor Bob Twiggs put it: “Only Pete Worden would do something like that.” Worden’s two year Space Act Agreement with San Quentin State Prison allows for “a few select inmates to develop their machining skills to make them more employable in the aerospace industry upon release,” Ames’ associate director of engineering Adriana Cardenas told Space News.

There seems to be no committment to actually fly the PPODs at this point. Quality is a concern from a workforce known more for manufacturing license plates than high tech devices. Ames plans to review the workmanship carefully, and may use some units for testing. So far, however, reports are that the PPODs are coming back just fine. If the devices turn out to be usable, the new manufacturing force would relieve NASA of the burden of producing the hundreds of PPODs needed to launch the ever increasing population of CubeSats each year. Worden has even promised to get jobs for some of the inmates after their release. Presumably, that won’t be at the security conscious space agency.

Below, watch as students load their CubeSats into the PPOD interface: