NASA's
newest astronaut candidates experienced their first taste of zero gravity and are
now preparing to make their first jet flights without the company of instructors.
The 11
members of 2004 astronaut class and three astronauts from the Japanese
Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) experienced small periods of weightlessness, as
well as lunar and Martian gravity, during an introductory flight aboard NASA's
KC-135 aircraft this month.
"Flying in
the KC-135 really gave us a small glimpse of what it's like flying in space,"
said astronaut candidate Randy Bresnik, a Marine
Corps major and pilot, during a telephone interview. "It's quite a euphoric
feeling, escaping gravity."
The flight
marked the culmination of several weeks of flight training, during which time
the Johnson Space Center-based class became qualified to fly theT-38 jet
aircraft used by NASA to maintain aviation proficiency in astronauts.
"When your
flying in a jet aircraft, everything goes much faster," mission specialist
candidate Shannon Walker, a NASA astrophysicist who owns a private airplane,
told SPACE.com.
Walker said the recent weightless flight was a welcome group
experience for the astronaut class after weeks of one-on-one training with T-38
instructors.
"It really
brought us together as a class," she added.
During
their two-hour flight, the astronaut class and Japanese astronauts experienced
44 parabolas, 40 of which were true zero gravity arcs. The remaining four
parabolas were split in half, with two flown at Martian gravity (about
one-third that of Earth) and the others at lunar gravity (one-sixth that of
Earth).
"It's going
to take a long time to wipe the smiles off our faces," Bresnik
said.
Up next for
the astronaut class is shuttle systems training to familiarize the candidates
with the intricacies of NASA's space shuttle fleet.
"It's going
to be months and months of training because of the complexity of the system," Bresnik said, adding that the time spent studying one system
of the space shuttle could equal the amount of time he's spent in ground
training for an entire aircraft.
That
training is currently scheduled to run into December, the astronaut candidates
said.
While the
new astronaut class trained on T-38 aircraft and experienced weightlessness,
NASA mission controllers, space station astronauts and the crew of the
Discovery STS-114 shuttle mission conducted an eight-hour simulation
to rehearse docking the spacecraft with the International Space Station. The
flight dress rehearsal was not lost on Walker, Bresnik
and their candidate comrades.
"I think it
really shows us the complexity of spaceflight," Walker
said, adding that the joint shuttle-space station simulation showed that NASA
is forging ahead with its return to flight operations. "There's always more
training to do."
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