This summer, five Drury students had the opportunity to experience zero gravity and conduct an experiment in NASA’s Weightless Wonder.
The students participated in NASA’s 2011 Grant Us Space Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program. The plane simulated 25-second windows of weightlessness while plummeting over the Gulf of Mexico between 25,000 and 35,000 feet of altitude, giving the aircraft its nickname “The Vomit Comet.”
Dalton Sivils performs "Martian Pushups" on the Weightless Wonder
“You never feel like you’re in a normal gravitational environment for close to two hours,” said Andy Chase, a May 2011 Drury graduate and one of the Weightless Wonder passengers. “You feel hyper-gravity and then all of a sudden you feel weightless and you float.”
Kieran Ojakangas and Preston Julian examine Drury's robotic arm in reduced gravity
The Drury team was selected as one of only two teams in the Great Midwest Region and was composed of six students, five of which actually flew in the aircraft. The students involved in the project were: Chase, Dalton Sivils, Preston Julian, Kieran Ojakangas, Celka Ojakangas and Kiefer Barrett.
The students’ experiment was called Hamiltonian Dynamics of a Two Degree of Freedom Robotic Arm with Viscoelastic Muscles in Microgravity.
Drury's Dalton Sivils examines a slinky in reduced gravity
The team spent a week at the Johnson Space Center in Houston before making their flights on July 14 and 15. “We learned how to work really hard, really fast. We had to work our butts off the entire time we were there, it wasn’t just for fun. We learned how to produce quality work in a time sensitive environment. You really felt like a professional,” Chase said.
“The students in the program get to see first-hand that ordinary people get to work at NASA in extraordinary jobs, doing these kinds of things,” said Dr. Greg Ojakangas, Drury professor of physics.
Did anyone vomit? You bet, but even that student admitted that it was an experience of a lifetime.
