When the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded over the Texas skies the morning of Feb. 1, seven Eastern Kentucky University students felt like they had lost members of their own family.

And, in a very real sense, they had.

A group of seven Eastern chemistry majors joined the NASA family when it learned in December that its proposed research project had been accepted as part of NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program.

EKU's Space Technology Research Team, under the supervision of Dr. Lori Wilson, will take its Multiplanar Microgravity Mixing project into the skies near the Johnson Space Center in Houston July 24-Aug. 2.

Members of the team are Amanda Brown, senior, Herndon; John Clemens, senior, Elizabethtown; Clayton Hall, graduate student, Lexington; Kena Lanham, junior, Owensboro; Greg Myers, senior, London; Sid Norwitz, freshman, North Kingstown, R.I.; and Wesley Penn, junior, Lexington. Dr. Carolyn Harvey, a faculty member in EKU's Department of Environmental Health, will assist with the project, and a Boeing engineer will serve as technical adviser.

Nationwide, 71 teams were chosen from 160 applicants. EKU was selected for Flight Group 6, along with 11 other institutions, including Arizona State, California Institute of Technology, Harvard, Oregon State, the University of Washington and West Virginia University.

"This is what I call active learning," Wilson said. "They came up with the idea and had to figure out how to do it. The project has integrated and broadened their education."

The team has been split into fliers and ground crew. After several days of preparation at the Johnson Space Center, the fliers will board a KC-135A research plane for two flights over the Gulf of Mexico that each provide approximately 25 seconds of zero-gravity conditions in which to conduct the experiment.

"If we're studying chemical reactions in microgravity situations, we need to be sure the results are due to the microgravity environment and not how it was mixed," said Hall.

In order study and use chemical reactions in microgravity, Wilson explained, understanding and facilitating mixing is essential.

The agitation device developed by the team uses centrifugal force in two planes.
"Our general hypothesis is that multiplanar mixing in microgravity … evenly disperses chemical reagents throughout a sealed fluid vessel," Wilson said.

The students agreed that the project calls them to apply knowledge from several subject
areas, including physics, chemistry and math.

"And we're learning how to work as a group," Brown said, "how to strategize, plan, research and delegate."

The fliers are Brown, Clemens, Lanham and Myers, with Norwitz as an alternate. Hall, Penn, Wilson and Harvey comprise the ground crew.

The final component of the project calls for the team to talk about its research in presentations to campus and local K-12 school groups.

The NASA attachment has provided extra motivation for the students, according to Wilson.

"There's a lot of enthusiasm and excitement about the space program," she said. "It keeps me going."