A team of five UNM undergraduate students will make history in March by becoming the first group ever to conduct nuclear-based research with NASA's KC-135 microgravity program.
The KC-135 is a plane, developed and operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which flies parabolic arcs over the Gulf of Mexico and, during its descent, has brief periods of microgravity, or weightlessness.
"It's like when you're coming over the top of a Ferris wheel, or when an elevator goes down," said UNM team leader Tom Quirk, a senior studying nuclear engineering. "It's the same sort of thing, only faster and inside a plane."
In addition to being a platform for research, the KC-135 was also used for the zero-gravity scenes in the movie "Apollo 13."
The team is comprised of five nuclear engineering students including Quirk, Dan Torres, Dan Sanchez, Jim Brickey and Julie Archuleta. Robert Busch, a lecturer in the Nuclear and Chemical Engineering Department, is the group's faculty advisor.
Quirk said that the KC-135 program is designed as a gateway to bring research conducted by college students into NASA. The team from UNM will travel to Johnson Space Center in Houston to test its theories.
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The group's research focuses on how radiation will react and the distance it will travel in a zero-gravity environment, Quirk said. While calculating distances covered by radiation on Earth is far from an exact science, the proposition becomes even trickier in space.
"There are approximate statistics that tell you where it should end up," Quirk said. "But if you reverse gravity, that number could change by 40 percent. So if you think you're at a safe distance from radiation, you could actually be 40 percent off."
The team will carry a small disk made of Americium, a naturally occurring metal which is calibrated to emit a known quantity of radiation at a known rate, aboard the KC-135. The relative data will be collected and analyzed using a computer designed and built by the group, said Torres, a member of the group.
He added that if the team's research proves fruitful, the results could prove important to NASA's space program.
"NASA wants to expand the space program beyond our solar system. The only way we're going to get out there and stay out there is through nuclear power," Torres said. "Our research is laying the groundwork for that."
Quirk said cost effectiveness is also part of NASA's push toward nuclear power. He added that with nuclear power, future trips into space could be made for a fraction of current costs.
Quirk said that the team, which will conduct its research during Spring Break, went through a long, painstaking process to become part of the microgravity program.
"About six months before your projected flight date, you have to send in a huge proposal," he said. "It needs to cover all the technical aspects, funding aspects, administrative and you have to create an outreach plan too."
The team's research has been funded through donations from local laboratories, engineering firms and the Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Department. No grants or financial awards have been afforded the team by NASA, Quirk said.
"Our payment is permission to fly," Quirk said.
Torres said that the UNM Space and Nuclear Power Department became involved with the KC-135 program in 1998, through Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Regents Professor Mohamed El-Genk.
"The Chemical Engineering Department has flown (on the KC-135) twice in the last three years," Torres said. "We were ground crew last year, and then said, you know what, we want something that has to do with our program, the nuclear program. That's when we started brainstorming."
As part of the team's outreach program, three local high school students will be included in the trip to Houston. Torres said that, as part of KC-135 program, NASA tries to have university groups train younger students that could advance potential research.
"What good is it to learn something if you can't teach it?" Quirk said.
Calls to NASA regarding UNM's impending involvement with the KC-135 program were not immediately returned Thursday.
