An Essex Junction resident and three other undergraduate students from the University of Vermont's College of Engineering and Mathematics will test their mettle as well as the design of their bioengineering experiment aboard NASA's KC-135 aircraft, used to train astronauts and commonly known as the "vomit comet," in a flight this month. The four seniors, all mechanical engineering majors, have been chosen to participate in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

        The students also are part of UVM's NASA Student Launch Project, for which they are designing and building the payload section for a NASA Nike-Orion sounding rocket, to be launched next summer from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The experiment they have designed for that launch -"Activity of Drosophila (fruit flies) in a Microgravity Environment" - will be tested first on the March KC-135 flight.

        Noel Nutting of Essex Junction and three fellow students will spend March 8-20 at NASA. They will undergo a week of rigorous, pre-flight training that will include time in a hyperbaric chamber. Then, donning their flight suits and boots, they'll board the KC-135A for a two-to-three-hour flight. The craft will fly 30 to 50 parabolic maneuvers, and the actual trajectory on each will provide approximately 25 seconds of zero-gravity conditions. The students also will experience 1.8-g entry and exit conditions in each reduced-gravity maneuver. At zero-gravity, they will experience weightlessness, and, at 1.8-S, they will feel 1.8 times heavier than their actual weight.

        Although the experience will be heady, the return to terra firma will signal more work for the students. They will analyze the results of their experiment and make necessary adjustments before the summer launch. They also will write reports for NASA and UVM on the experience.