Industrial Partner Receives Grant

Eric Benton of Eril Research, Inc. (ERI), San Rafael, CA, an Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences industrial partner, recently received a grant titled "Radiation Shielding Properties of Multifunctional Spacecraft Materials" from the Space Radiation Shielding Program at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL.  The purpose of the grant is to identify and test materials that would help minimize astronaut exposure to space radiation during interplanetary space missions such as flights to the moon and Mars.  Candidate materials include hydrogen-doped carbon composites and polymers, metal hydrides, and materials containing hydrogen-filled carbon nanotubes.  High hydrogen content is beneficial in space radiation shielding materials because hydrogen inhibits the production of secondary neutron radiation.  ERI will expose samples of these materials to proton, neutron, and heavy ion beams at ground-based particle accelerator facilities including the newly-opened NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.  During accelerator exposures, the radiation field behind the shielding material will be measured using an array of passive and active radiation detectors.  ERI is working with the Center for Applied Radiation Research (CARR) at Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, TX and Space Systems/Loral of Palo Alto, CA in carrying out this grant.

This summer’s exciting research and educational endeavors allowed me to travel around the country enjoying some of its scenery and, more importantly, taking care of some business.

My first journey was to Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, to do research on NASA’s KC-135, otherwise unofficially known as the Vomit Comet, to evaluate some prototype sample collector pads for the Hera Mission.  SpaceWorks, Inc. has been collaborating with the Space Center and Virginia Tech. to develop the prototype sample pads.  Some modifications were made to the test fixture after the first flight day and everything went very well.  Not to worry though, it was not all work and no play.  There were a few extra parabolas for summersaults and pushups.  In the next few weeks we will be analyzing the data and video to determine the best pad composition and adhesive for a sizable sample return from an asteroid.

My second expedition led me to Pasadena, CA, for a week long summer school opportunity at JPL.  The objective for the week was to learn the lifecycle of a space mission.  Eighteen graduate students from all over the country worked together as a team with JPL’s very own Team X to develop an idea for a Mars Scout Mission from a mere idea to an actual proposal in one week.  We learned about all the subsystems, how they interact with each other, cost, and proposal writing.  It was a real eye opening experience and a very valuable one in terms of it directly relating to my own research with the Hera Mission.

Melissa Franzen, UArk, Cosmochemistry

Center Professor Studies Active Volcano

Dr. Glen Mattioli, professor of Geo-sciences and a group of students were conducting research on the Caribbean island of Montserrat when the Soufriere Hills Volcano erupted on July 12, about three miles from where they were staying.  Mattioli’s research, in collaboration with colleagues at Penn State University, Duke University, the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. and colleagues from England, focuses on getting a more complete idea of what happens below the earth’s surface before and during eruptions to see what kinds of events lead up to an eruption.  While major earthquakes in the Caribbean occur sporadically, volcanic activity abounds on many of the islands.  The Lesser Antilles island arc has 14 potentially active volcanoes, including the Soufriere Hills Volcano that erupted on July 12.  A prolonged eruption on Montserrat, which began in 1995, drove away more than half of the island’s 11,000 inhabitants, killed the tourism industry and buried the airport in a pyroclastic flow.  The island has become a living observatory for researchers who want to learn more about active volcanoes.  To that end, Mattioli’s research group has worked with scientists at the Montserrat Volcanic Observatory (MVO) to establish stations where they can get good measurements of seismic activity, deformation, tilt and strain.  They have drilled bore holes to place the instruments far underground, where they experience less surface noise and more actual data than their counterparts on the surface.  To date, they have four subsurface stations positioned around the mountain where they can collect this data and six additional surface sites.  Until recently, the data had to be downloaded at the site using a laptop computer, dumped on the computer at Montserrat and transferred to the researchers about once a month.  Mattioli and the students planned to hook up equipment that would allow the data to feed directly to the University of Arkansas in real time.  The data could then be stored at the University and distributed to researchers interested in specific types of information.  "The data we got from this eruption are spectacular," Mattioli said.  "Now it’s a matter of sifting through the data to see what it all means."

Recently, I spent a month in California as part of the NASA Graduate Student Research Program.  While there, I attended the 6th International Conference on Mars at Caltech, and also conducted research on EPR of various feldspars at JPL, a government laboratory.  Both the conference and the research were intended to aid our general project of developing OSL dating techniques for in-situ experiments on Mars.

Aside from the value of the research itself, learning more about different environments in which research can be conducted is useful.  To date, I have experienced primarily university-based research as have most graduate students.  While the science and experimental procedures were, of course, the same at JPL, the environment for scientific research was very different.

Most notably, JPL is dedicated to space science research.  At the university level, there are of course many people interested in space science, but a dedicated facility offers more expertise and knowledgeable scientists in almost every aspect of the field.  Such a situation both forces one to think more critically about challenges and problems and offers new solutions to problems.

Another important difference seems to be that JPL is much more focused on producing "results":  they are concerned with sending missions and experiments in to space and as a result, JPL is organized into departments that focus on different aspects of missions (theory, experimental, instrumentation, communication, etc) as opposed to the typical university approach of working on a project from beginning to end.  Both methods have their advantages, but the JPL approach may be more effective for producing an end result.

In summary, I would highly recommend conducting research outside the university environment as part of the graduate student experience.

Michael Blair, OSU, Physics

Studying Microorganisms Under Martian Conditions

Timothy A. Kral presented a poster based on his research at the 6th International Mars Conference, July 20-25, at Caltech in Pasadena, CA.

Kral had previously discovered that methanogens, microorganisms in the domain Archaea, could live on a Mars soil simulant, JSC Mars-1, if supplied with water, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide.  This presentation focussed on growth on the Mars soil simulant in the Andromeda Environmental Chamber.

With a temperature of 35C and pressure of 400 mbar, the organisms produced significant quantities of methane, a byproduct of their growth.  These results demonstrated for the first time growth of methanogens under reduced (less than ambient pressures), and also the usefulness of large-scale planetary simulations that are possible in the Andromeda Chamber.  In future experiments, Kral plans to reduce the pressure further as well as the temperature in an attempt to mimic subsurface martian conditions.