March 27, 2006
BIRMINGHAM, AL — The call by President George W. Bush for NASA to focus on space exploration brought new challenges to light. Among them, what do you do if something breaks on the way to Mars? As Mike Foale, International Space Station science officer, said last year during an in-flight experiment on how solder reacts to zero gravity: “We won’t be able to send stuff back to the ground for repairs.”
The questions raised by the space station experiments are being addressed by a team of UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) School of Engineering students, led by their advisor Heng Ban, Ph.D., P.E. Ban, UAB associate professor of mechanical engineering, receives funding from NASA to study semiconductor material development.
March 28, UAB’s six-member student team will head to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they will recreate and expand on the space station experiments as part of the Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program. On two consecutive days – to be announced later – they will fly aboard the C-9 aircraft used to simulate zero gravity. Each flight will last an average of 60 to 80 minutes, and will fly approximately 30, zeroG parabolic maneuvers over the Gulf of Mexico. The trajectory flown on each zeroG parabolic maneuver will provide about 25 seconds of zero gravity conditions for the team’s experiment. At the end of the zeroG maneuvers, teams/experiments also are treated to about 30 seconds of lunar-g (1/6-g) and about 40 seconds of Martian-g (1/3-g).
“At some point in a long, manned space flight, repairs will have to be made,” Ban said. “The experiments on the performance of solder, a substance used to join electrical connections, conducted last year on the space station is very important because it showed that solder joints made in micro gravity are more porous, which leads to a decrease in joint strength and its ability to conduct electricity, potentially leading to equipment failure.”
“Our students have built a special soldering system, and they will be testing it during zero-gravity flight and study how reduced gravity affects the properties and strength of soldered joints.”
The potential influences of solder joint performance on crew safety and the overall success of space exploration missions necessitates a more detailed understanding of solder joint properties, Ban said. The experiments also will add to the understanding of gravity’s influence on solder solidification and applications in the more typical Earth-gravity environment.
When these students arrive home on April 8, they will begin an outreach program, making presentations to schools in the Birmingham City, Jefferson and Shelby County school systems. Nine presentations are planned, each describing the teams experience at Johnson Space Center and the results of their experiment. The goal of these presentations is to stimulate student interest in the fields of science and engineering.
The experiments will be photographed and videotaped. Visitors can share the teams experience at microgravityuniversity.jsc.nasa.gov.
UAB students participating are:
- David Scott, senior, of Oak Mountain
Mechanical Engineering – Flight Crew - Chip Baugh, senior, of Mobile
Mechanical Engineering – Flight Crew - Blake Wallace, senior, of Trussville
Mechanical Engineering – Flight Crew - Wendy Sudsinsunthorn [cq], senior, of Pell City
Mechanical Engineering – Flight Crew - Aaron Short*, junior, of Alabaster
Mechanical Engineering – Ground Crew - Andrew Short*, freshman, of Alabaster
Materials Science and Engineering – Ground Crew
*Aaron Short and Andrew Short are brothers