 "Photo: Lea Anne Crittenden")
Joshua Colwell, a physics professor at UCF, is assisting Blue Origin in suborbital research experiments for a new rocket called New Shepard. Blue Origin is an aerospace company owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.
Colwell and his research assistants are working on an experiment called Microgravity Experiment on Dust Environments in Astrophysics.
The experiment will focus on the process where space dust builds up to form planets or the rings around planets, according to a press release from UCF Today.
MEDEA will be conducted in a free fall environment.
Colwell and first year graduate student, Akbar Whizin, went to the National AeroSpace Training and Research Center in Southampton, Pa. to attend an astronaut boot camp back in January.
Whizin, who is getting his PhD in planetary science, said that the boot camp taught them the hardships their bodies will undergo while going to and coming from space.
"We learned about what your body does under large amounts of G-force, what happens when we are hypoxic, and how to combat these without passing out," Whizin said.
According to a Jan. 12 story by UCF Today, the camp gave researchers experience on the centrifuge, which simulates the 3.5 G-forces of acceleration into space and the 6 G-forces astronauts experience upon re-entry to Earth.
"We did high altitude training and simulation of G-forces," Colwell said.
He said it's like taking a ride on Mission Space at Disney's EPCOT center, but with a higher G-force experience.
Colwell, a professor at UCF since December 2006, has been working on this experiment since 1996.
"[The Collide Module] took its first flight on a space shuttle in 1998 and the second flight in 2001," Colwell said.
The current module has two cameras, a computer and a free fall open door. This module flew on the space shuttle Columbia.
Funding for MEDEA is provided by a grant from NASA for $414,000 over the course of four years.
"That means spending about $100,000 a year for the ground-based work," Colwell said.
Other funding is split between UCF and the University of Florida.
Colwell and his student research team are recycling the current modules from the shuttle version and making them work for a rocket.
"It will have new housing, computers, cameras and hardware," Colwell said. Colwell's experiment is scheduled to fly on a rocket.
According to its online timeline, Blue Origin is expecting flight opportunities for remote-controlled experiments on a crewless flight test in 2011, and flights with experiments requiring a researcher in 2012.
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