By Noah Sarabia
The Prospector
Lockheed Martin hosted a challenge to UTEP students on the first floor of the Undergraduate Learning Center Monday, Feb. 18. The top prize is a letter of intent for hire by the company.
The challenge consisted of three regular questions with an additional fourth, make or break question. The first three are to gain access into the challenge box, to a “space experience like none other.” The challenge box offers a chance to win a “Voyager” record replica set, which record aboard the spacecraft. The fourth question is the make or break. If answered correctly, the participant will get a letter of intent for hire by Lockheed Martin.
“It’s a way to engage students in dreaming about careers in space. … It’s a job interview in a box,” said Mark Lewis, a Lockheed Martin spokesman.
The box is meant to help students challenge themselves and to achieve something.
The jobs offered at the event are for Lockheed Martin’s Space Segment, however there are also jobs for engineers, mathematicians and scientists. Lockheed has numerous ties to UTEP, including the sponsorship of several labs and the engineering school. Graduates of UTEP “are executives and engineers at Lockheed Martin already,” Lewis said.
Lockheed Martin has developed NASA’s deep-space crafts such as Orion, and looks to build the next craft to go to Mars.
“And that’s something that absolutely the next graduates at UTEP can begin working on now,” Lewis said.
Lockheed Martin is currently developing the next generation of satellites, which will be launched later this year.
UTEP is the second campus on which the challenge box has made an appearance. About 250 students have already attempted the fateful questions.
“It’s a big mission, and we think UTEP is the right place to do that,” Lewis said.
