Physics Undergraduates Soar for NASA

A team of undergraduates from the University of Arkansas participated in NASA's Undergraduate Reduced Gravity Program this summer at Johnson Space Center and NASA's Ellington Field. The team consists of Ryan Godsey, a senior in physics, Amber Straughn, a senior physics major, Mike Meyer, a junior physics/math major, and Jim Czlapinski, a sophomore in physics. After designing the experiment, getting accepted for the program, and building their apparatus, the team traveled to Houston for 10 days to prepare for and fly their experiment in microgravity. The team is working on an experiment for the new Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences to discover what happens to dust particles on the surface of asteroids when the particles are disturbed by impact or volcanism.

NASA's reduced gravity facility is a military KC-135 plane that flies 30 to 40 parabolas, consisting of steep climbs and dives, over the Gulf of Mexico. During the climbs and dives, passengers in the plane are under micro-gravity conditions. The experiment the UA team designed must be conducted on the KC-135 because the gravity on Earth is much stronger than the micro-gravity conditions on asteroids. During the flight, the team members will lose gravity and float through the air while their equipment is anchored to the floor. Digital video was taken of two cylinders filled with sand and iron (the most abundant constituents of asteroids) and is being analyzed presently.

For pictures of the team, visit http://zerog.jsc.nasa.gov under summer student campaigns, zerog flights 3 and 4. The team's website is http://www.uark.edu/depts/cosmo/lowg.

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Last Updated: October 15, 2001
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