Tuesday, Februar y 27, 2018
C a l P o l y, S a n L u i s O b i s p o
w w w. m u s t a n g n e w s . n e t
E s t a b l i s h e d 1 916
EXTRATERRESTRIAL EXPERIMENTS ONLY UNDERGRADUATE SPACE ENVIRONMENTS LAB IN THE COUNTRY
Bryce Aston @ brycesa96
Tucked away on a corner of campus, in an echoey, high-ceilinged room filled with a jumble of vacuum chambers, a box full of empty drink cans sits atop a shelf. This is where aerospace engineering associate professor Kira Abercromby beelines when describing her favorite experiment. She holds a painted can with her eyes shining behind a pair of safety glasses and her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail as she explains how she helps students make the cans explode. Abercromby explains that the cans’ wall thickness is proportionate to that of a rocket body. And so, with the help of some glue, a bike valve, hydrogen, oxygen and rocket igniters, she and her students simulate the explosion of rockets in space. “We basically try to break everything in these labs so that you don’t do
it when you’re building,” Abercromby said, laughing. Abercromby and her colleague aerospace engineering assistant professor Amelia Greig are key figures in one of the most unique courses in the department. The aerospace engineering degree is split into astronautics and aeronautics concentrations, and Space Environments (AERO 353 and 354) is an undergraduate course specific to the astronautics concentration. Through lecture and lab components split into two separate 10-week courses, Greig and Abercromby introduce students to the unique environments and environmental factors spacecrafts encounter in space. The course is unlike almost any other in the country; as far as Abercromby knows, only the Air Force Academy offers an undergraduate lecture equivalent, but it does not include the lab component that makes Cal Poly’s program so special.
What are ‘space environments’? As Greig describes it, the course’s purpose is to help students begin to think about a world very different from our own. Factors such as low pressure environments in space can lead to material degrading and outgassing. Radiation and space debris can damage a spacecraft’s body if it is not protected. These factors are key to designing spacecraft and planning missions, but are easy to forget if students are not taught them specifically. “Because we live on the surface of the Earth, it’s what we’re used to and you sort of forget how different it can be in space and how damaging it can be for things that can survive perfectly on the surface,” Greig said. Abercromby and Greig break the lab component down into six main topics: the launch environment, generic vacuums, neutral areas – or areas where spacecraft encounter disassociated, or atomic, oxygen that is harsher than the O₂ we breathe – space debris, radiation and plas-
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ma. Each area has specific labs associated with it. The actual laboratory includes eight vacuum chambers, according to Greig. Two of these – affectionately dubbed ‘Thing One’ and ‘Thing Two’ by Abercromby – host most of the student labs for the course. The other six chambers are largely used by undergraduate and graduate researchers under Abercromby and Greig’s supervision and direction. Projects range from testing miniaturized ion propulsion systems to irradiating materials in the atomic oxygen chamber. Bringing Space Environments to Cal Poly When Abercromby applied to Cal Poly 10 years ago, there was no equivalent to Space Environments, but it was part of her vision. Luckily for her and for the department, Tina Jameson was applying at the same time. SPACE ENVIRONMENTS LAB continued on page 2