NASA has picked a Litchfield County company to develop a ventilator that takes less time to make as an answer to the coronavirus pandemic.

Evo Design, which is located in an old town water plant in Watertown, has taken on a project that could save countless lives.

The company is designing a ventilator that can be made in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost.

"It's a lot faster. It's a lot simpler," says Mohan Rajasekaran, Evo Design's general manager.

After the COVID-19 crisis hit, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab set out to design a cheaper, easier-to-build ventilator that could be rapidly deployed to hospitals and field clinics.

"We have the potential to save human lives, people that we might know; our neighbors, our families," says Michelle Easter, a NASA mechatronics engineer.

NASA picked Evo Design, and only seven other companies, to turn the dream into a reality.

Once these engineers finish the design work, and the FDA approves, another Connecticut company in Guilford will make up to 600 units a month.

"We're going to have to make the design ready for commercialization, which means it can be produced in high volume," says Rajasekaran.

Evo Design hopes to have the new ventilators on the market by the end of this year.