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52 °F Forecast | Road Cams Monday, May 9, 2005 Today's News | Shop Our Valley | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery | Contact Us SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Menu Guide How To Guide Health Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Real Estate Guide Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Passport to the Rogue Valley SHOP OUR VALLEY AutoFinder HomeFinder JobFinder Classified Place an ad TOP JOBS EXTRA Ashland News NIE Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People Volunteer Moving here? eSouthernOregon CUSTOMER SERVICE FAQ's Advertise with us Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend May 9, 2005 SOU/OIT team will test idea in zero-G’s Students’ water purification project wins approval from NASA’s Reduced Gravity Flight Program for testing ina weightless environment By BILL KETTLER Mail Tribune If humans ever fly to Mars, they may have students at Southern Oregon University to thank for their drinking water. Four SOU students will travel to Texas this summer to test new ways to purify water in space. Working jointly with students from Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls, they developed a project that won approval from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Reduced Gravity Flight Program. Michael Andrus, Kiley Faubian, Jeffrey Haug and Jason Matthews will travel to Houston in July to test their project in a weightless environment created inside a specially-equipped jet aircraft. "Wanting to be an astronaut, that really caught my attention," Andrus said. The 1994 graduate of South Medford High School worked as a computer programmer for nine years before he decided to pursue his dream of space flight and return to school. Peter Wu, a professor of physics at SOU, recruited Andrus and the others to work with students at OIT. Advertisement "I had heard about the (NASA) program a few years ago," Wu said. "I thought we should make a team (with OIT). We’re just not big enough on our own to make a team. " Students from universities across the United States submitted projects for NASA’s "Microgravity University" to learn more about how organisms and materials function in space. All the projects were designed to be tested in the micro-gravity environment produced inside the aircraft. NASA scientists approved 50 studies on everything from the behavior of honeybees to the movement of liquid fuels inside storage tanks. Wu and faculty at OIT were attracted to the filtration problem because improved filtering systems will be a critical part of any protracted space flight such as a mission to Mars. Existing filters fare poorly in space because air bubbles that accumulate in fluids can’t be easily removed in space the way they can on earth. "Without gravity everything’s different," said Jason Matthews of Medford, a physics major at SOU and a 2003 graduate of South Medford High School. Without gravity, there’s also no buoyancy, which prevents air bubbles in water from forming large bubbles. Tiny bubbles block the densely packed filtering medium, slowing the passage of water. "We’re building a device to simulate a filter," Matthews said. "We’ll watch how air accumulates in the filter medium and see if there are ways to prevent it." The SOU/OIT team will spend a week at the Johnson Space Center, rubbing shoulders with NASA scientists and students from such highly-respected research centers as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Purdue University. Some will experience weightlessness as they monitor their experiment in the air; others will serve as the ground crew. Wu said they all will gain invaluable experience, no matter how the project fares. "The chance to meet people and have mentors is extremely valuable," Wu said. "Flying is one thing. To make contacts and show people what you can do — you just can’t ask for anything better than that." Wu said each student will have to spend $1,000 to $1,200 to cover transportation to Houston and living expenses. People who want to contribute financial support can send checks to: Southern Oregon University, Physics Department, 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Checks should be made payable to "SOU Reduced Gravity Project." Reach reporter Bill Kettlerat 776-4492, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2005 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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