Purdue Aerospace Story Ideas

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:   Eighteen of Purdue's 19 living astronaut alumni will return to campus for the President's Council Annual Weekend on Oct. 22 and 23 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of alumnus Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon. A news conference with the astronauts is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 22, in the auditorium of the Krannert Building. A KU band satellite feed of the news conference and b-roll will be provided from 3:15 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. Broadcasters may reserve time in advance to ask questions from their studios. Journalists also are invited to have lunch with the astronauts and engineering alumni at noon Friday, Oct. 22, in a tent on the Memorial Mall. Purdue President Steven C. Beering will address the group after lunch, highlighting the Schools of Engineering master plan for the 21st century. Contact the Purdue News Service, at (765) 494-2084, purduenews@purdue.edu, for satellite coordinates, to reserve satellite time to ask questions, or to attend the news conference and/or lunch. For more information about the astronauts and Purdue's connections to the space program, visit the Purdue in Space Web site. Here are just a few story ideas about ongoing efforts at Purdue to expand our reach in space. October 8, 1999 Space exploration drives energy innovation Predictions that earth's supplies of oil and natural gas will run out in 50 years mean the clock is ticking for humankind to invent truly new forms of energy, such as those being developed for space exploration. "We are at a turning point," says John Rusek, assistant professor in aeronautics and astronautics. Possible future technologies range from engines that run on nonpolluting fuels derived from water, to nontoxic batteries filled with hydrogen peroxide, to space propulsion systems that use powerful electric fields instead of rockets. Rusek researches these concepts in collaboration with Stephen Heister, a Purdue professor in aeronautics and astronautics. Space exploration is pushing scientists to invent entirely new forms of power that might, for example, exploit stores of water on the moon and Mars, says Rusek, who teaches courses called Advanced Energy Conversion and Future Propulsion Concepts. CONTACTS: Rusek (765) 494-4782, rusek@ecn.purdue.edu; Heister, (765) 494-5126, heister@ecn.purdue.edu Purdue to have Mach 6 wind tunnel Construction will be complete in the spring on the fastest low-noise research wind tunnel at any academic institution in the world. Purdue's Mach 6 wind tunnel will be capable of conducting experiments in airstreams traveling at six times the speed of sound. Steven Schneider and Steven Collicott, associate professors in aeronautics and astronautics, will use the $1 million facility to study how air flows over and around objects traveling faster than the speed of sound. One application of their research is the design of new reentry space vehicles. "Designers are considering a new reentry vehicle with a metal skin," Schneider says. "This would eliminate the tile system used on the space shuttle, which is expensive to maintain." CONTACTS: Schneider, (765) 494-3343; steves@ecn.purdue.edu, and Collicott, (765) 494-2339 or (765) 494-5131; collicot@ecn.purdue.edu Professor charts course for mission to study the sun A Purdue professor and two doctoral students have designed the trajectory for an upcoming NASA mission. Kathleen Howell, professor of aeronautical and astronautical engineering, helped chart the course for the spacecraft that will carry out the Genesis Mission, scheduled for launch in 2001. The mission will collect solar wind particles – material being swept out of the sun – and return them to Earth for analysis. The trajectory Howell designed with students Brian Barden of West Lafayette and Roby Wilson of Vincennes, Ind., will put the spacecraft in "orbit" near a libration point nearly one million miles from Earth in the direction of the sun. A libration point occurs where the gravitational pull from two or more heavenly bodies, plus the centrifugal force from their rotation, cancel each other out. "These orbits are very complicated, much more complex than the orbit of a planet around the sun," Howell says. She says a spacecraft in orbit near a libration point offers a stable venue for making observations and taking data. CONTACT: Howell, (765) 494-5786; howell@ecn.purdue.edu   To the Purdue News and Photos Page