Two Lamar University student teams have been selected to fly experiments aboard NASA’s reduced-gravity aircraft as part of the space agency’s Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunity Program. The two make the 10th and 11th Lamar University teams selected to fly since the program began in 1995.
The students will travel to NASA Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field in Houston to conduct their lunar gravity experiments aboard the agency’s “Weightless Wonder” aircraft in April and July 2008.
Each year, the Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program gives undergraduate students the opportunity to propose, build and fly a reduced-gravity experiment. The teams will perform the experiments aboard NASA’s C-9 aircraft, which mimics micro-gravity for 25 to 30 seconds at a time by executing a series of 32 parabolas – a steep climb followed by a rapid descent – over the Gulf of Mexico.
Lamar University’s opportunity to participate is the result of the hard work and commitment of the students who put many hours into researching and building their experiments, said Jim Jordan, chair of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at Lamar. Jordan holds a Ph.D. in geology from Rice University.
In one proposal, a student team under the leadership of Jiang “Jenny” Zhou, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, will perform a study of “Vibrational Damping Effects of Grass-Like Crops in a Microgravity Environment.” As mankind explores the possibility of extended durations in space for manned spacecraft missions, two essential requirements are evident. The first one is the suppression of low-frequency space vehicle structural vibration, and the second is the sustainable production of the clean air, water and food needed by the crew.
“The hypothesis is that a crop-based life support system would suppress low-frequency structural vibrations, and, simultaneously, the vibrations would enhance crop growth in microgravity,” Zhou said.
The student project will evaluate the energy dissipation of the selected grass-like crops in a microgravity environment. The experiment of dynamic structural frequency response will be performed on a grass-like crop colony on the flights expected to take place in early April. Energy dissipation and the damping loss factor will be measured to show that grass-like crops allow the colony to dissipate substantial amounts of energy, over a frequency band centered at 0.1 to 4 Hz.
The research is supported in part by a New Investigator’s Program grant from the Texas Space Grant Consortium and is one of the primary activities of Zhou’s senior design class.
In the second project selected to fly, students will determine whether the geometry of a meniscus — the curve in the surface of a liquid that is produced in response to the surface of the container or another object — can be controlled in reduced gravity to form a variable focus reflective surface.
In the experiment, a sealed cylindrical container will provide a boundary that will stop the capillary rise of water contained in the cylindrical container. Then, by altering the volume of water in the container, the curvature of the meniscus may be varied. Camcorders will record images so that the various curvatures of the meniscus during reduced gravity can be plotted and mapped. This technique of producing a reduced-gravity, variable-focus reflective surface may have space-science applications such as use in a liquid space telescope.
