After traveling 350 miles above the Earth’s surface, the space shuttle Atlantis will land on the 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope to deliver much-needed repairs. Mission specialist astronaut Megan McArthur, a 2002 Ph.D. graduate of UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, will be among the seven astronauts slated to depart in May.
McArthur is not the first UCSD alumnus to travel to outer space, nor is she the only prominent connection UCSD has to NASA ‘mdash; physics professor Sally Ride became the first American female to visit space in 1983.
Using underwater acoustics to study the ocean floor at Scripps, work unrelated to her current tasks at NASA, McArthur said she aquired valuable skills needed to become an astronaut.
‘Doing ocean-going research has some parallels [to] space flight in that you are deploying instruments, recovering instruments and taking data,’ McArthur said. ‘If [your instrument] breaks, you have to fix it while you’re removed from your normal environment. So, you’re going to be applying the same type of problem-solving skills and engineering knowledge you had [in your graduate studies] to your current environment.’
Many NASA-funded research projects are currently in progress at Scripps. One project is the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, a laser optometer that tracks the movement of ice sheets over the Antarctic and Greenland, and provides data on topography and vegetation around the globe.
For the past 15 years, Scripps chemistry professor Jeffrey Bada has been working on another NASA project: the design and building of the Urey Instrument, which will extract organic materials from space dust and break them down into individual amino acids to determine whether the basic building blocks for life exist on Mars. If completed on time, the Urey Instrument will deploy in 2016.
‘[Scripps] has a very active program in climate
and atmospheric chemistry,’ Bada said. ‘Right now, we know there was once liquid water on Mars. We do not know if there are any organic compounds. So, [the Urey Instrument] is really a culmination of a long-funded NASA project.’
UCSD’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences also has a hand in NASA projects, focusing primarily on astronomy and the development of space observation instruments. Technology from CASS has been used in the Hubble Telescope and by the European Space Agency’s International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, as well as in one of the three telescopes on NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer.
‘A lot of research deals with looking back as far in time as you can and figuring out how the universe got to be the way it is,’ CASS Associate Director of Operations Richard Rothschild said. ‘Where did the elements come from? Did they come from the big bang? No, only hydrogen, helium and a bit of lithium were formed. All the rest were made in stars, so [we] study the life cycle of stars and the elements created there.’
Because most space research is done over the course of several years, there are not many opportunities for students to get extended hands-on experience. Thus, the California Space Grant Consortium was formed in 1988 to train and educate the next generation of space workers. Composed of several universities throughout California, CaSGC is headquartered at UCSD.
Every year, UCSD’s CaSGC recruits a team of undergraduate and graduate students for a project to test their understanding, assessment, development and utilization of aerospace technology. Assembled from groups of seven to 20 students, teams do anything from designing and building a rocket to creating a new urine receptacle for astronauts.
‘Currently, we’re testing the free stream flow [of liquid] to see how urine behaves for an astronaut in microgravity, for the purpose of increasing knowledge on such phenomena to help in the design of a new urine receptacle for NASA astronauts,’ Thurgood Marshall College senior and second-time CaSGC participant Timothy Havard said.
Utilizing engineering principles through CaSGC projects, Havard said he is able to reap the benefits of actual scientific research. After completing his first project, a tensegrity model, he was able to test it on NASA’s Vomit Comet, an airplane that flies in a parabolic vertical flight path to create brief moments of weightlessness.
‘It was a lot of fun,’ Havard said. ‘It’s supposed to be all business: focus on your experiments. But we had some time to float around and do somersaults. They even ran a few extra parabolas that were lunar G and Martian G, so you get the feel [of] what it was like to be on the moon and Mars.’
In a more grounded approach to NASA and space travel, the Students for Exploration and Development of Space club hosts year-round lectures and activities where students can interact with researchers and astronauts. In some cases, members end up working in the field.
Earl Warren College senior and SEDS principal member Christie Carlile participated in NASA’s cooperative education program, where students work at the Johnson Space Center for two to three quarters. After spending two quarters at the Johnson Space Center, Carlile was offered an engineering position with NASA.
Carlile, who participated in ground operations for two shuttle missions, said she enjoyed working with NASA, where she trained in mission controls.
Hired on as a NASA engineer, Carlile said she realizes that becoming an astronaut is extremely difficult. McArthur echoed this sentiment.
‘The advice that I was given was that getting to be an astronaut is a real long shot,’ McArthur said. ‘So if you’re planning a career around NASA, pick something you love to do regardless of whether you think NASA will hire you. You won’t be truly good at something unless you love it. Just figure out what you love to do and do it well.’
Readers can contact Jasmine Ta at [email protected].