By Bill Bray
HUNTERDON COUNTY DEMOCRAT, THURSDAY, JUNE 3,1999
PAGE B-2

A 1995 North Hunterdon High School graduate got a chance to work in zero-gravity as part of NASA's Student Launch Program.

University of Vermont senior Dan Barnett, the son of Dee and Ken Barnett of Bethlehem Township, helped to design an experiment to find the effects of zero gravity, on fruit flies. Mr. Barnett, a mechanical engineering student, recently went to Johnson Space Center in Texas to ride a KC-135 aircraft, commonly known as the 'Vomit Comet," to see if the experiment would work.

"I really had a great time, it was an excellent experience," Mr. Barnett said. During his flight, the plane made 40 parabolic maneuvers. The plane starts at 1-G, normal gravity then goes into a 2-G, twice the Earth's gravity, climb, at the crest of the parabola, passengers experience about 25 seconds of zero gravity.

"It was a pretty good deal of time," he said. He had to be careful when the gravity changed.

"It was a pretty abrupt change. If you are not warned, you could smash against the floor," he said. While weightless, Mr. Barnett got a chance to float around the plane and play with food like the astronauts do in the Space Shuttle. At one point, Mr. Barnett said he was catching droplets of water, floating in mid-air, in his mouth.

After experiencing zero gravity, the plane flew a lunar and a Mars parabola, simulating the gravity conditions on the moon and the planet Mars. Mr. Barnett said his team went through a lot of physical testing before they were allowed to go.

"They're pretty strict with their physiological training," he said. Training included a hyperbolic chamber test. The chamber can simulate higher or lower air pressure. He said they were put inside the chamber and the pressure was lowered to simulate the atmosphere at 20,000 feet. Then they were told to remove their oxygen masks, inducing hypoxia, a lack of oxygen to the brain. Mr. Barnett said he became light-headed and euphoric. While he was hypoxic, he had to complete a simple questionnaire to see how well he was functioning. One question asked him to subtract his age, 21, from 17. He answered 45. One member of his team was not allowed to go on the KC-135 because she had asthma in high school.
 

Mr. Barnett's team designed and built an experiment on fruit flies to learn more about why the male fly's lifespan is shorter in zero gravity than it is at 1-G while the female's remains the same. Mr. Barnett said they hypothesize that the fly's metabolism is the key. The female can control her metabolism more than the male and consequently can live longer in the hostile environment of zero gravity. The team created a tower-like device to hold 120 flies in small tubes that allow them to walk back and forth and an assortment of monitoring devices. Each tube has one fly and two infrared sensors to monitor the actions of the fly. Another 32 flies are in separate compartments with a video camera recording their actions. This videotape will be examined later by Mr. Barnett and his fellow students.

FLOATING IN ZERO GRAVITY, Dan Barnett (left) of Bethlehem Township and Dan Cheung, both students at University of Vermont, ride on the KC-135 aircraft with their fruit fly experiment, in the metal cylinder, to make sure it would work properly in a weightless environment.

The KC-135 flight allowed them to see if the equipment would work as planned in zero gravity. In August, the fly experiment is scheduled for launch. The tower will be encased inside one of NASA's Nike-Orion rockets and launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, 93 miles into the air. The sub-orbital rocket will allow the experiment to be in constant zero gravity for about 10 minutes before it starts to return to Earth. Mr. Barnett said the Coast Guard will pick up the payload, including the experiment, after it lands in the Atlantic Ocean. According to Mr. Barnett, his team will find out more information then to see if their hypothesis is right.

His project is sponsored by the Vermont Space Grant Consortium. It works with schools and NASA to find ways to get students involved with the space program. During his flight, Mr. Barnett videotaped an experiment put together by some seventh grade students who wanted to know if water and oil would mix in zero gravity. They do. Mr. Barnett said he would like to do something like this again professionally. After graduation he plans to work for a company, in Vermont, that works with plastic injection molding.

To see more about Mr. Barnett's experiment, log on to the web site at www.emba.uvm.edu/vsgc/rocket/rocket.htm