Houston, We Have Lift-Off

The early morning flight out of Houston, Texas, felt like any other commercial airline ride Tim McNaught has taken in his young life. Then the plane began to tilt downward at a steep angle and nosedive toward Earth, making the 19-year-old University of Miami student lose all sense of gravity—literally.

This summer, McNaught and three of his fellow aerospace engineering classmates enjoyed a “ride of a lifetime” that was part of NASA’s Microgravity University program, which allows undergraduate students to propose, design, build, fly, and evaluate an experiment in zero gravity conditions aboard its C-9 aircraft.

During the flight, McNaught and fellow teammates Mark Huber, Tyler Hawkins, and Joseph Dussling tested an experiment on how air, water, and solids react in zero gravity. “These elements interact differently in microgravity, so we wanted to observe that interaction and look at flow patterns,” McNaught says.

The four UM students spent an entire year outside of classes researching and designing the experiment, which was one of only 50 proposals accepted by NASA. They observed during zero gravity conditions that the water took on a gel-like appearance, while solids—in this case, tiny plastic and foam pellets—tended to clump together. Their experiment, which could help solve problems of waste disposal in space, was filmed, and the team is currently analyzing the results frame by frame.

Before they could take off in NASA’s “Weightless Wonder,” the students had to undergo training and preparation, which included mission briefings, physical examinations, and sessions inside a hypobaric chamber to simulate the pressure of extreme altitudes. Dressed in official United States Air Force flight suits, they became the first all-freshman team in the nation to fly on the plane.

The special aircraft, which looks like a regular commercial jetliner, simulates zero gravity by flying a series of parabolic maneuvers—rollercoaster-style patterns in which the plane climbs at 60-degree angles and then nosedives at 45-degree angles over and over. It is during the descent toward Earth that passengers experience about 25 seconds of weightlessness. NASA has been flying student teams aboard the plane each summer since 1995.