Gravity, we
have defied you. Seven university student teams from across the United States
escaped the pull of Earth's gravity — if only for a few seconds — on a NASA
microgravity flight to see how fire, liquids and magnets behave in weightlessness.
The students flew with
NASA's Microgravity University Program Friday (July 19) aboard a Zero Gravity
Corporation Boeing 727 jet modified to fly up and down on a parabolic path to
create up to 30 seconds of zero gravity, moon gravity or Martian gravity on the
downswing followed by periods of "hypergravity" (twice Earth's pull)
on the way back up.
About 34 students, NASA
specialists and veteran astronauts Mike Fossum and Cady Coleman flew on
ZERO-G's G-Force One jet, which took off from Ellington Field here near NASA's
Johnson Space Center. Among the groups was the UCSD Microgravity Team from the
University of California, San Diego, which SPACE.com has been shadowing to show
how student science is performed in weightlessness without leaving Earth. Offering
students and teachers the chance to perform weightless experiments is the goal
of NASA's Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program. [Photos: Zero-Gravity
Science at NASA's Microgravity University]
Tiny fires + zero
gravity = Science
The UCSD Microgravity
Team, led by aerospace engineering undergraduate Sam Avery, worked for nearly
nine months to create a triple-contained experiment that tested how biofuel
fires burn in microgravity. The goal, Avery said, was to learn how large of a
fire a single droplet of biofuel creates when ignited in weightless conditions.
The experiment was accepted for a NASA weightless flight in October 2012, with
the team working ever since to design, fund and then build its flame-inducing
box.
During Friday's flight,
Avery used a control box covered in switches to issue swift commands to
machinery inside the fire box to ignite the biofuel droplet. One switch moved a
syringe into place, the next told the syringe to squirt out a tiny blob of fuel
onto a set of crosshair-like filaments. Then, another switch moved the igniter
into place, setting off the burn. The resulting zero-gravity flame was a
rippling blob of pure fire about the size of a small piece of hard candy that
glowed in haunting shades of reddish-orange.
Teams of students and
teachers prepare their experiments for weightless tests inside a NASA hangar a
…
"I think that it
looked amazing," Avery told SPACE.com. "It was just a big, morphing
ball of fire. Every time it was a little bit different."
Knowing how small
biofuel fires behave in weightlessness could help engineers develop more
efficient biofuel engines on Earth, as well as better fire countermeasures for
astronauts in space. Avery and his team used ethyl alcohol as the fuel source
in Friday's weightless flight. The team planned to try butyl alcohol during a
second flight, if possible. [6 Everyday Things That Turn Weird in
Weightlessness]
A taste of
weightlessness
The UCSD team saw a
nearly 95 percent success rate in their zero-gravity experiment. The NASA
astronauts on the flight, Fossum and Coleman, spent some time observing the
UCSD fire experiment. Fossum said it looked remarkably close to the flame
experiments he performed during a long-duration mission on the International
Space Station.
Avery and his team had
hoped to fly two flights this week, with the first flight taking off on
Thursday. But bad weather along southern Texas and the Gulf of Mexico delayed
that first flight to Friday morning.
G-Force One, a Zero
Gravity Corporation jet for weightless flights, sits at Ellington Field in
Houst …
In addition to Avery,
teammates Jack Goodwin and Daneesha Kenyon flew on the Friday zero-gravity
mission. Kenyon observed the experiment and recorded the team's work with a
small GoPro video camera, while Goodwin called out the steps for Avery to
perform with the control box and a side-mounted valve to vent out the flame
vapors.
Who cares about space
sickness?
In between experiment
runs, the UCSD team and other students enjoyed some fun parabolas and took
advantage of the weightlessness to conduct outreach experiments.
For my part, I
attempted to show how to put on a SPACE.com t-shirt in weightless conditions
and hoped to float some space shuttle toys, but with just 30 seconds of
weightlessness, even unfolding the shirt was a challenge. The lesson: Think ahead
of what action need to be performed before the onset of weightlessness in order
to take advantage of that brief period. But the sensation of floating alone
seemed to spark elation in all those aboard, sick or no. [Video: Astronaut
Bloopers in Zero-G]
"It's a whole body
experience," UCSD aerospace engineering study Jack Goodwin said in a
post-flight interview with a NASA video team. "About one-third of the way
through, it became natural … you don't have to walk anymore."
Both Avery and Goodwin
initially decided to forgo taking a shot of scopolamine, an anti-motion
sickness medication offered by NASA for all participants. Ultimately, though,
they opted to take the shot just in case. They fared extremely well, floating
and laughing during the rare zero-gravity stints that they weren't working.
They tackled 2G pushups on the upswing.
Engineering students
with the UCSD Microgravity Team from the University of California, San Diego, s
…
Scopolamine, we thank
you
I got through nearly
all of the 30 zero-gravity parabolas without any motion sickness from the
weightlessness. Near the end, I felt some slight queasiness and whipped out a
small plastic bag for the last two weightless periods, just in case. Luckily, I
didn't get sick and was able to marvel at Goodwin and Avery as they performed a
moon gravity dance with Coleman in one-sixth Earth's gravity, and then again
under a one-third Earth gravity parabola mimicking conditions on Mars.
Kenyon, meanwhile, also
made it through most of the weightless parabolas but did have to make use of
her plastic bag. (All flyers kept them tucked in our flight suit chest pockets
to keep them close). She ultimately opted to sit in one of the seats used
during takeoff and landing for the remainder of trip.
"Even so, I would
100-percent go again," Kenyon said. "It was such a fantastic
experience."
In a post-flight
briefing, Coleman and Fossum told the student flyers that they were impressed
with the science they saw on the flight. But something else also caught their
eye.
Student engineers
Daneesha Kenyon (left), Jack Goodwin (center) and Sam Avery (center right) with
th …
"I saw a lot of
teamwork and team members not only watching their experiments, but also
watching out for one another," Coleman said. "It was really
fun."
Friday's flight took
off at about 9:30 a.m. EDT (10:30 a.m. EDT/1430 GMT) and lasted about two
hours. Avery, Goodwin and Kenyon flew on the actual flight while five other
team members waited on the ground. The rest of the team at Ellington included
Andrew Beeler, Victor Hong, Joshua Siu, Joshua Sullivan, Nico Montoya and their
NASA mentor Christina Gallegos.Gallegos is an electrical engineer who works on
the Morpheus moon lander prototype at NASA's nearby Johnson Space Center. Other
team members remained behind in San Diego.
Some of the remaining
team members may fly on Saturday, if the weather allows, in order to collect
more data. Beeler, who serves on the team's ground crew to prime the fire
experiment for flight, said Friday's experiments managed to burn the needle
used to squirt out the biofuel droplet ahead of ignition. [Fires in Space: It's
Not What You Know]
"We have never
seen this before," he told SPACE.com as he showed the charred syringe
needle. "Maybe we'll see how it happened when we go back through the
video."
The UCSD Microgravity
Team has been supported by several sponsors, including the Canadian biofuel
company W2 Energy, the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering, the California Space
Grant Consortium and the Ledell Family Scholarship, Avery said. Altogether, the
team raised more than $10,000 to fund the experiment and spent more than 1,000
man-hours building the flame apparatus to NASA specifications. Their mentor at
UCSD for the project was engineering professor Forman Williams.
Members of the UCSD
Microgravity Team await their first weightless flight on Zero Gravity
Corporatio …
Gallegos, the NASA
engineer who served as the UCSD team's mentor on NASA's side, said it was her
job to make sure the team knew NASA's regulations and built its flame box to
the proper safety specifications. She was slated to fly on the team's second
flight to observe the experiment in action.
The UCSD Microgravity
Team was just one of seven university teams selected by NASA to fly on the
Microgravity University flights this week. Seven other teams of classroom
teachers representing grades K-12 also flew on NASA flights this week with the
agency's Teach from Space program.
The experiments among
the other university teams were varied. The UCSD team was experimenting with
two types of biofuels, while a team from Purdue University tested how to remove
excess water from fuel cells to improve power systems on satellites and
spacecraft.
Another team from West
Virginia University studied the effectiveness of spray-cooling on a heated
chunk of aluminum to learn how well the method could perform in satellites and
spacecraft. And yet another team from the University of Texas, El Paso, was
testing how mock Mars and moon dirt combust when mixed with magnesium.
You can see the full
list of university teams and their experiment names for this week's NASA
Microgravity University here:
Frank Prochaska, NASA's
student campaign manager for the Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program, said
the space agency has been organizing the flights for students and teachers for
about 18 years.
NASA astronaut Mike
Fossum poses for a snapshot with the UC San Diego Microgravity Team during a
wei …
NASA originally flew
microgravity training and research flights aboard its KC-135 "Weightless
Wonder" aircraft, which was also known as the "Vomit Comet." The
program is based at the Johnson Space Center, with flights originating from
Ellington Field. In 2008, NASA began buying weightless flights aboard ZERO-G's
G-Force One. ZERO-G has offered commercial weightless flights since 2004.
Before flight, Prochaska
urged the college student teams to perform their experiments carefully, but not
to overlook the personal impact of where they are: in weightlessness. More
people have climbed to the peak of Mount Everest — the world's tallest mountain
— than floated in microgravity, he said.
"This is it, this
is the pinnacle of your parabola here," Prochaska said. "Don't get so
focused on your research that you forget to look around."
NASA's next
microgravity flights are scheduled for next week, between July 26 and Aug. 3,
as part of the agency's Systems Engineering Education Discovery (SEED) program.
The next Microgravity University flights will take off in November, NASA
officials said.
In the meantime, Avery
and his UCSD teammates are reveling in what appears to have been a successful
experiment and an unforgettable experience. The students will take their data
back to UCSD, analyze their findings and then write them up in a final report.
"I really feel
like this was one of those once-in-a-lifetime type of experiences," Avery
said.
Editor's note: Visit
SPACE.com next week for more photos and video from the UCSD Microgravity Team's
weightless ride. You can learn more about the UCSD Microgravity Team's fire
experiment at the team's website here.
Source: Yahoo news
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