NASA referred to its KC-125 aircraft as the “weightless wonder” because it carried college students and their experiments into micro-gravity by flying in parabolic patterns to create an environment of near weightlessness. But most members of S&T’s Miners in Space program in the early 2000s knew it as the “vomit comet” for its motion sickness-inducing…
The snows of Kilimanjaro have been touched by Missouri S&T. Sarah Taylor, a 2001 graduate in electrical engineering, and her father, Mark Amen, who earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1976, climbed to the summit of Africa’s highest peak and planted the S&T flag in March 2011. It’s quite a feat, considering that…
Janet Kavandi, former deputy director at NASA’s Glenn Research Center and a NASA astronaut, has logged more than 33 days in space, traveling more than 13.1 million miles in 535 Earth orbits. Kavandi, who earned a master’s degree in chemistry from S&T in1982, was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame as a part…
Col. Thomas Akers, Math’73, MS Math’75, has logged more than 800 hours of space flight and 29 hours of space-walking experience. He was selected for NASA’s astronaut program after joining the Air Force and was a mission specialist on four space flights – including on the Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis. Following his career in the…
In 1967, Farouk El-Baz, was appointed by NASA as secretary of lunar landing site selection and chairman of astronaut training in orbital observations and photography. He helped NASA officials determine where the Eagle would land on the moon in 1969. El-Baz’s role was chronicled by Tom Hanks in the TV series From the Earth to…
Sandra “Sandy” Magnus has been part of three space flights and spent more than four months in space during her career at NASA. She joined NASA in 1996 and spent 11 days in space in 2002. During that trip to the International Space Station, she operated Space Shuttle Atlantis’ robotic arm. Magnus earned a bachelor’s…