Last Thursday and Friday, WSU’s Miller Advanced Research and Solutions Center (MARS), located adjacent to Hill Air Force base in Clearfield, held its first open house to give the public a glimpse at the important work it is doing.

MARS Center Executive Director Benjamin Garcia told the Standard-Examiner Friday the center’s story begins about three years ago.

“In 2023, we received a state appropriation to stand up what we were proposing to do at the MARS Center,” he said. “At that time, I was actually part of Northrop Grumman and was part of their industrial advisory over the capabilities that we could bring to the center. We had a group of us working together that kind of came up with what we’re trying to do, which is to focus on advanced composite materials for very extensive military systems like hypersonic vehicles and weapon systems, as well as reentry systems that may support Hill Air Force Base’s Sentinel system. And so there was a lot of synergy behind that. We had a lot of government support — the state of Utah gifted Weber State $20 million to implement that mission at the MARS.”

Garcia applied for the executive director role and was named to the position in Nov. 2023.

The time since has largely been spent renovating the space and bringing in equipment and the necessary infrastructure.

“We had a lot of facility upgrades that have gone on for the last two years,” Garcia said. “A lot of equipment — advanced manufacturing equipment — required a lot of power and water cooling, as well as fire protection and those types of things. Once all that got in place, probably midway through this year, we decided to go ahead and have an open house to showcase where we were with all the equipment.”

He noted that not all of the equipment was in place by last week’s open house, but it was still a successful couple of days that was able to get some important eyes on what the facility is looking to accomplish.

“There was a conference in Logan, Utah, called the Hypersonic Technology System Conference, and that conference had a lot of industry folks in town, had a lot of government folks in town,” he said. “We coincided the open house to capture people that were headed back to the airport on Thursday and Friday to spend some time at the MARS Center and see what we were doing.”

According to a press release sent out just ahead of the event from 47G Public Relations which helped with the open house, there was a lot to take in, even if the facility is still growing.

“During the open house, visitors will see Continuous Fiber Additive Manufacturing (CFAM) demonstrations, a 200-ton Direct Current Sintering system capable of temperatures up to 2,500°C, full-scale composite machining, a large-scale actively cooled graphitization furnace and large-structure robotic X-ray CT and Laser UT inspection capabilities,” the release said. “The event will also feature live hybrid solid rocket motor testing demonstrations, offering visitors a firsthand look at the testing and research capabilities supporting advanced aerospace and defense technologies.”

Garcia said the open house was ultimately a huge success.

“Everything went off without a hitch,” he said. “We had really great industry participation. We had a lot of government support. We also have a technical advisory board, and we had a meeting (Friday) morning from 9-11 a.m. where we had all of our interested parties and vested interest in seeing the success of the center participate, which is a nice overview of people from Hill Air Force Base, a lot of industry partners, some small business partners, as well as pretty good national organizations that are here in town that were part of that. That was a really great opportunity to talk with them and kind of be the center also at the same time that we had the open house. That was also a very successful event.”

He said the open house also marked new WSU President Chris Mallett’s first visit to the MARS Center since taking the position in August.

“He was very excited about what we’re doing here,” Garcia said. “He really liked the student engagement that we have.”

Garcia said the future is looking bright for the MARS Center and the partnerships it’s helping forge.

“It really is a hub between industry, academia and government,” he said. “Since we’re a regional university, our primary focus is to actually get technology transition to our government industry partners. That’s where we kind of work synergistically with a lot of companies. We’re not necessarily doing the low-technology development efforts that you’ll find at the big R1 universities. We’re more involved in, ‘How do we manufacture things? How do we do it in a way that’s affordable and producible?’ That’s kind of the focus of the center, and that’s where we’ve gotten a lot of traction with our industry and government partners.”