Students Soar With Experiments in NASA Aircraft

FOR THE THIRD CONSECUTIVE YEAR, 48 TEAMS of college students from around the country investigated a variety of scientific disciplines from inside a NASA aircraft in a student program originating from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. A second group of 48 teams is scheduled for August 1999.

NASA's 1999 Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program, funded by NASA and administered by the Texas Space Grant Consortium in Austin, Texas, took about 96 teams of undergraduate students aloft in a KC-135A aircraft. The goal of the students was to study the effects of microgravity on various scientific experiments.

 

...the passengers and their experiments can experience about 25 seconds of a zero-gravity environment on each parabola.

The NASA KC-135A flies over the Gulf of Mexico. During each two- to three-hour flight, the aircraft maneuvers through a series of about 40 steep climbs and descents, called parabolas. Depending on the precise trajectory flown by the plane, the passengers and their experiments can experience about 25 seconds of a zero-gravity environment on each parabola. The KC-135A aircraft is used to introduce astronauts to the feeling of microgravity, test hardware and experiments destined for space flight and evaluate medical protocols that may be used in space.

During the student campaign, teams of up to four students and a professional journalist fly aboard the aircraft to conduct and evaluate their experiments. The journalist documents and reports on the students' efforts. A supervising professor and a student ground support team remain at Ellington Field near Johnson to support their flying counterparts.

Months before flying on the KC-135A, known as the "weightless wonder," the students must identify, develop and test their experiments. The experiments are critiqued for scientific merit and are reviewed extensively for safety by NASA experts prior to the flight.

During the first week of their two-week visit to Houston, program participants receive preflight training and assemble and test their experiment packages. The students fly with their experiments during the second week, adjusting equipment as needed and conducting postflight debriefings and reviews.

Each team also is required to develop a program for sharing the results of its experiment with teachers, students and the general public following the conclusion of the flight campaign. The participants must analyze their data, prepare applicable education and information materials and submit final postflight reports.

A list of the selected teams and additional information about the program can be found at http://www.tsgc. utexas.edu/floatn/ The Texas Space Grant Consortium is a component of the Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, which is administered by NASA.

For more information, contact Burke Fort, Project Director of NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program.
Call: 512/471-3585, E-mail: fort@csr.utexas.edu
Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

College students fly over the Gulf of Mexico aboard this KC-135A aircraft to conduct and study microgravity research.