7Discoveries Alan Stern ’75 will become the

Space A sci-fi reality

Alan Stern ‘75 takes his next step into the realm of space exploration: a NASA- sponsored commerical flight to the edge of space with Virgin Galactic.

Paying $200,000 apiece for a joyride into space, celebrities like Brad Pitt, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber can certainly afford the ticket.

Planetary scientist Alan Stern ‘75 is a celebrity in his own right, but his ticket fee is being waived by NASA.

Why?

He’s not taking a joyride — he’s doing research.

After completing his bachelor’s two degrees in physics and astronomy at the University of Texas, as well as his master’s degrees in aerospace engineering and planetary science at the University of Colorado, Stern went straight to NASA for an internship.

“It was the place to be,” Stern said. “The first summer, I worked in Mission Control, and I got to fly with some experiments on zero-gravity flights. The second summer, I worked on spacewalk procedures.”

He quickly moved up in the ranks, becoming the principal investigator on NASA’s New Horizons mission that started in the year 2000.

“At its peak, there were 2,500 men and women involved,” Stern said. “It was the fastest spacecraft ever launched, and it’s now almost twice as far away as Pluto. It’s still operating perfectly, and still churning out scientific results.”

The team has shrunk to only 200 people, largely because the mission has been so successful.

“Everything we aimed to do was either met or exceeded,” Stern said. “The flyby of Pluto took place on July 14, 2015, and the flyby of the Kuiper Belt Object Arrokoth was on Jan. 1, 2019. We left earth in 2006. It took nine and a half years to cross the solar system — going super fast. We got to the orbit of the Moon in nine hours. We literally launched at two in the afternoon and were on the 11 o’clock news.”

Stern began his efforts to convince NASA to fund something like this as early as the end of the 80s.

“It took over 14 years to even raise the money, another five years to build it and nine and a half years to fly it to Pluto,” Stern said.

In October 2020, Stern was selected as the first NASA-funded commercial space crew member aboard a Virgin Galactic mission.

“It’s been a life goal since way before I went to St. Mark’s,” Stern said. “I’ve gotten close a couple of times but never succeeded. But now I’m the first scientist that was ever chosen and funded by NASA to do this — on the planet, in the universe, ever! That’s just an amazing honor and a high responsibility.”

Virgin Galactic has received much media attention in the past decade owing to its proposal of tourist flights to space. Stern’s trip is unique because NASA, a federal agency, is sponsoring his research.

“Private space companies and the government together can accomplish a lot more than either can alone,” Stern said. “Imagine if everything that we did in the sky was only the result of the U.S. Air Force. Without commercial operators, we wouldn’t have airlines, we wouldn’t have FedEx, we wouldn’t have a lot of things that make the economy go today. In that vein, the new developments in commercial spaceflight are creating a whole new space economy that we can hardly imagine today.”

Right now, SpaceShipTwo is still in flight-test, but he expects it to be ready in the next six months.

“The mission’s main objective is twofold,” Stern said. “The first is determining how well the vehicle can be used for future research, and the second is a spaceflight physiology experiment. I’m bringing along a sophisticated camera system called an image-intensified camera that can see extremely faint things when you point it at the sky. I’ve done this experiment many times on F/A-18 Hornet [jets], with myself as the operator.”

His instruments have also had the chance to fly on the famed Space Shuttle, operated by NASA astronauts.

“Essentially, we have data from the Space Shuttle and the F/A-18 flights, and we want to find out how looking through the Virgin Galactic windows compares,” Stern said. “The quality of the windows and the way that light glints off the wing, for example, can limit your ability to do real, hardnosed experiments.”

In addition, Stern will be sporting hightech gear to monitor his vitals.

“Think of the gear for the spaceflight physiology experiment as a vest that measures my pulse rate, my respiration rate and my blood pressure to try and get physiological data about what it’s like for an experimenter flying on these flights,” Stern said. “On the way up, I’ll be experiencing over five Gs of acceleration. Then you’re in microgravity, meaning you’re basically weightless for five minutes, and on the way down it’s six Gs of deceleration.”

Six Gs of force can be equated to the feeling of six times one’s body weight. Stern is comfortable with the experiment, but it’s not something that he’s ever experienced before.

“I’ve worn this same system on jet fighters pulling similar trajectories but not to that kind of altitude level,” Stern said. “The plan is to characterize what other experimenters might expect to experience, essentially with me as a guinea pig.”

The sheer height Stern will reach is mindboggling. An airplane typically flies at around 35,000 feet. Stern will reach 350,000.

“If you’re standing straight up, and the altitude I’ll reach on SpaceShipTwo is around your eye-level, the highest normal commercial airline flights would be halfway between your knees and your feet,” Stern said. “Ten times lower down.”

Stern sees a future with a lot more space-flight — NASA sending people to the moon, or even Mars, as well as orbital space lines. “It’s just going to be this outward expanding wave,” Stern said. “I think people will look back in a century, at the time we’re living in and probably say, ‘Back then, in the teens and twenties, that’s when Star Trek began.’ So these are truly pioneering days, and it’s cool to be a part of it. It’s a big honor

and also quite a responsibility.”

On the topic of the advancement of space travel, Stern’s friend and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is probably the first name that comes to mind. Stern is an avid supporter.

“About Elon, I’ve got to tell you that I’m biased because I’m a Tesla owner, but I think what he’s doing is unbelievably historic,” Stern said. “He’s the key change agent of both the electric car industry and the space flight industry. Either one of those things would be an amazing place to be in history. He’s a nine-sigma in terms of what he’s been able to accomplish. If that’s not sci-fi, what the hell is?”

As for what’s next in his career, Stern sees his palette of activities revolving entirely around the space industry.

“I’m still running New Horizons, and I’m on a couple of NASA science mission teams where I play a supporting role,” Stern said. “I’m also pretty involved in a couple of companies that are startups and a couple of boards. But if I could do anything next — my dream would be to do research on the International Space Station or on the moon.”

NEW HORIZONS

Principal Investigator Alan Stern ‘75 during a press conference after receiving confirmation that the spacecraft completed the flyby of Pluto. The craft took nine and a half years to reach this goal.

STORY Austin Williams, Toby Barrett GRAPHIC Morgan Chow, Creative Commons

7 Discoveries

Sci-Mark

A chat with the founder of the science-focused school publication and its sponsor this year. Page 8

In brief

BIOLOGY OLYMPIAD

Senior Matthew Ho and junior Sampath Rapuri advanced to the semi-finals stage of the US Biology Olympiad, as was announced March 5. Twenty-five students took the test Feb. 11 after school, and only the top 10 percent of over 5,000 testers will compete again in mid April.

This is Ho’s fourth semi-finalist achievement and Rapuri’s second.

The test covered a wide range of topics from ecology to genetics, requiring participants to review outside of the classroom.

HARVARD-MIT TOURNAMENT

Eight members of the Math Team competed in the Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament (HMMT) March 5. Selected students spent the weeks leading up to the competition practicing with each other as the pool of candidates narrowed.

HMMT is entirely studentorganized, and each tournament has nearly 1000 students from around that world that participate.

The contest consists of several different rounds focused on algebra, geometry, and combinatorics, a Team Round focused on proofs, and a Guts Round requiring teams to complete 36 math problems divided into sets of four.

Celebrity FLYERS

Tom Hanks Brad Pitt Ashton Kutcher