EI
Eric Ireland
  • Physics and Mathematics
  • Class of 2015
  • Kenosha, WI

Eric Ireland conducted research aboard a NASA parabolic aircraft

2014 Aug 26

Eric Ireland of Kenosha, WI conducted research aboard a NASA parabolic aircraft. This is the seventh consecutive year that the Carthage Microgravity Team has conducted research with NASA.

The NASA Science Mission Directorate approved Carthage's proposal to continue studying fuel gauging technology in zero gravity. The team's work could help NASA come up with a solution to one of the biggest barriers of deep space exploration. In essence, the type of fuel gauge used in vehicles on Earth doesn't work in zero-g, so the team is working on one that will and could be used in future spacecraft and satellites.

The Carthage team went to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to fly its experiment aboard NASA's Weightless Wonder, a plane that provides periods of weightlessness by flying a series of parabolas over the Gulf of Mexico. The students were the only undergraduate team on a research flight that also included researchers and engineers from Northwestern University, NASA-Glenn Research Center, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During the spring semester, the team built the experiment, developing and testing a novel technique to measure the mass of liquid in a propellant tank. After the end of the school year, the team began working at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin.

Heralded as "the birthplace of modern astrophysics," the observatory was built in 1897 by the University of Chicago and houses the world's largest refracting telescope used for scientific research.

Over the years, the observatory has been home to some of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. In 1917, Edwin Hubble, for whom the Hubble Telescope is named, performed his graduate work at the observatory. After winning the Nobel Prize in 1921, Albert Einstein used the observatory to conduct experiments that would help prove the theory of relativity, and Carl Sagan spent four years in the late '50s completing his Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics.

All the work at Carthage and at Yerkes led to Ellington Field and the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"It's a substantial investment NASA is making in our students, so that's exciting," said Professor Kevin Crosby, the Microgravity Team's faculty advisor and chair of the Division of the Natural Sciences.

Past Carthage teams flew fuel gauging experiments twice on parabolic flights and once on a sounding rocket. In collaboration with researchers at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Carthage students have developed a method that uses vibrations from sound waves to calculate the amount of liquid in a tank.

Carthage students have flown aboard the Weightless Wonder every year since 2008 while performing research with NASA engineers. The College was only one of two institutions in the country to be selected each of the six years the Systems Engineering Educational Discovery (SEED) flight program was offered.

Although the SEED program received no federal funding for the 2014 flight year, Prof. Crosby noted that the USIP research grant exposes students to even more robust research tracks. Other institutions chosen for USIP include Carnegie Mellon University and several large state schools.

"In this case, the research goal is primary," he said. "It's good to have our program recognized for its own merits, rather than the perceived educational benefits to the students."

Participants in both of the College's space science programs regularly present their findings at national and international conferences. After graduation, some have gone on to forge careers in aerospace engineering.