Very few people will experience zero gravity. One local science teacher will get that chance without having to go into orbit.
Jill Weaver, a STEM teacher for Valley View Middle School in Germantown, will experience zero gravity while flying aboard the Air Aero G. That’s a plane that flies in an arc to simulate zero gravity for its passengers.
It's part of the Space for Teachers Embedded Teacher Program, which is a nonprofit collective of educators, scientists, and artists that advances student engagement in aerospace and STEM.
Her zero-G flight is scheduled for Nov. 20.
She told WYSO’s Mike Frazier that she’s doing it to conduct two science experiments for her STEM students.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Jill Weaver: Our first experiment we titled “Making Medical Magic,” and we actually are partnered with two physicians from Baylor University in Texas and we have been working with them now for over a year.
This piece of equipment that we are flying is called the AGE-reader and it is a medical instrument. It uses autofluorescence to light your skin and gives readings that are indicators for glycation in products, which are the AGEs. And those kinds of things can be associated with advanced risk of cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes.
So the end goal of this for the researchers at Baylor is that, yes, we can get some good data that they can then use to further their interest in having this piece of equipment on like a LEO or a Low Earth Orbit situation, maybe even on the ISS or in analog missions on Earth.
"Am I nervous? Absolutely. I'm incredibly incredibly excited though."
Mike Frazier: Why do this experiment in zero G? Why can't you conduct the experiment on Earth?
Weaver: Basically we're trying to simulate what an astronaut or someone off planet might be dealing with in changes of gravity that they would still be able to receive medical care and get diagnostic equipment that is usable in those situations. So it's a comparison of both how it operates on Earth to how it would operate off planet.
Frazier: So this is an experiment to see how a medical device would work for people in zero-G environments, say, like you said, on the space station or other missions off of Earth.
Weaver: Yes, possibly on the moon or maybe even Mars.
Frazier: Cool, okay, experiment number two.
Weaver: All right, our second experiment is the RASCube. And the RASCube is a device that was built by Edward Robinson. Ed Robinson owns Robinson Aerospace in Australia.
So my students actually did all the building of these satellite cubes and the testing to make sure that they were working correctly and lots of communication between here and Robinson Aerospace to make sure that we were doing everything exactly the way it should be done.
They have had these flown sub-orbitally, but never on a zero-gravity flight, so they were interested in that portion of it as well. So yes, they will be also looking at our data. So we actually have an authentic audience to share data with once these items return to our classroom.
Frazier: Are you nervous about this?
Weaver: Am I nervous? Absolutely. I'm incredibly incredibly excited though.
Frazier: Can you briefly describe how this plane achieves zero-G for folks who may not know?
Weaver: The basic kind of pattern of this aircraft is that we're going to take sharp a upward motion and it's almost like we're free falling. So we'll do ten of those parabolas where the aircraft goes almost on a straight upward pattern, and then comes quickly down. So if you think about maybe a roller coaster in the sky, it's kind of like that. That moment when you are going down and you get that little feeling like you're rising up, that's kind of what is going to be intensified.
Frazier: As someone who's taught science for quite a while, and as a teacher and educator, what does this whole experience mean to you?
Weaver: I was once a little girl watching the astronauts on TV drinking Tang and eating my space food sticks and dreaming about space and here we are 26 years into my teaching career — I also get to live a little small part of that dream and it's even better that I get to take students along with me on that journey, so that's the heart of my excitement about this whole adventure that's coming up.
Frazier: That sounds really cool that you've kind of dreamt of being an astronaut and you're going to kind of experience it for a short time.
Weaver: Well, I think the most important part of this flight isn't that I'm going to experience weightlessness, which I will, but I think it's that my students have been a part of a real research mission and they know their work matters. They know that it's important what they're doing. They know it's important to be able to participate in things like this. And I think that's the big story here. Not so much that I am doing this, but that I am taking all of these kids along with me.
