“Keeping your feet underneath you is shockingly hard.” “Its hard to describe,” Sorenson said of the experience. The plane does a series of 16 parabolas on the way out, and another 16 on the way back. With each arc the plane flies up at a 45-degree angle for 90 seconds during which gravity feels twice as strong as on Earth, then drops in freefall for about 30 seconds in which passengers feel weightless. The aircraft flies in reserved air space over the Gulf of Mexico doing a series of parabolic arcs. The main event was a two-hour flight aboard the Weightless Wonder. Students also got to see actual Mission Control rooms for the shuttle, space station and historic Apollo missions, and had an opportunity to discuss career options with NASA employees. The week-long trip included tours of full-scale replicas of the space shuttle and the International Space Station. This years welcome meeting was cut short by a chance to meet and get autographs from the recently returned crew of the Endeavor space shuttle. Though it was serious science, this wasnt a typical lab class. “Everyone was just really nice and gracious and helpful.” “Once we got to Houston, it was very much: ‘You are researchers, here to do your research,” she said. “Its a competition to be accepted into the NASA program, but once you get there youre all equal,” explained team captain Alyssa Sorenson, a graduate in aeronautics & astronautics. The UW Microgravity Team was among about a dozen undergraduate teams chosen to participate. One of the criteria for selection is that the idea be of possible use to NASA. “The students approach looks like it could have some advantages.” “There are a lot of different ways of transferring fuel, but there are problems with each one of them,” said faculty adviser Jim Riley, a UW professor of mechanical engineering. ![]() The UW students built a spinning drum to store and transfer fuel in zero gravity. Each project must address a current problem in space science. Student teams design and carry out an experiment aboard an airplane that provides brief experiences of a weightless environment. This was the second consecutive year that UW undergraduates have participated in the program. Participants in NASAs Microgravity University in Houston spent the last week of their undergraduate careers carrying out an experiment they designed for testing in a reduced-gravity environment. NASAĮight students lurched, tumbled and floated through an unforgettable final lab project last month. NASA employees accompanied the students and filmed the experiments. ![]() ![]() The monitor on the wall shows that the gravity is zero. Seniors Alyssa Sorenson, Jamie Waldock and Sasan Boostani with the experiment they built to test in microgravity.
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