Kevin Jarzomski (freshman-division of undergraduate studies) doesn't need to go through NASA's space training program to participate in a space simulation program or to become a terranaut.
He is participating in the Mission Earth project of his Science, Technology and Society 497F (Space Colonization) class.
He and the rest of the Mission Earth team, including a diverse group of students such as a psychologist, an artist, a graduate student and a bioengineer, will be running a simulation of an exploration of a cave on another planet.
"It's definitely a mixed bag," Nick Smerker (junior-integrative arts) said. "Everyone's been interested in space at one point; you can't walk through your whole life and never look up. It's quite a challenge to coordinate and take on so much stuff in such a short amount of time."
In honor of Space Day, the Mission Earth team will be exploring Tytoona cave on Saturday.
Mission control for the team will be open for public observation from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in HUB Alumni Hall. Other activities for Space Day will be going on as well, such as exhibits and displays. The whole event will be sponsored by the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium.
Exploring the cave also has importance for future space missions such as Mars, said Ricardo Silva, co-instructor of the class.
"There are caves in Mars formed from lava and water erosion," he said. "The surface of Mars is now sterile because of cosmic rays, but if there was life, it would go underground where there is a constant environment and atmosphere. Caves can also be easily turned into a living space."
Tytoona cave, near Altoona, is a cave preserve of the National Speleological Society, which has given permission for the team to explore the cave. Mission Earth is also collaborating with Nittany Grotto, a Penn State spelunking group. The area that the teams will be exploring is less than a mile long.
"We wanted a nearby cave that is large enough to explore with standing space and has no vertical drops," Silva said.
Exploring the cave is a valid simulation of a space mission because NASA often trains its own astronauts in harsh environments like the desert and Antarctica, Silva said. The cave is dark, cold (about 50 degrees), wet and dirty.
"Caves simulate going to an alien environment," Silva said. "Caves are close enough to us that we don't need complex equipment, but they still provide constraints."
Eighty percent of the cave is extremely wet because there is a river running through it, Jose Agraz (graduate-electrical engineering) said.
"There are places where you can dive underwater," Silva said. "It has a lot of hydrological potential, but we will not be doing any diving."
There are also insects, spiders and bats inside.
"I ate a lot of mosquitoes while inside the cave," Agraz said.
In addition to being the first space simulation mission in a cave organized by college students for a class, this project is also significant because it is the first time a wireless local area network (LAN) is being setup inside a cave.
"Establishing a wireless LAN network in a cave has never been done before," Silva said. "It may not work because of the reflection of microwaves within the cave."
Two teams, Team Grotto and Team Data, will be exploring the cave and setting up the network. The team will be wearing orange overalls and some clothes underneath to keep warm, Agraz said. Each team will have a laptop, a Web camera and a headset.
As the team moves through the cave, they will set up wireless access points that consist of boxes connected by a cable to a base camp at the mouth of the cave. The team will enter data into the laptop and wirelessly transmit it to the base camp. The data will then be sent to mission control at the HUB. This is a similar setup to what would happen on Mars, Silva said.
Some data will be taken manually in a logbook. The teams will only have about three hours of exploration time each due to the limited battery life of their laptops.
The teams will be stopping at preset and easily recognizable points in the cave to collect data. The points are named after space exploration activists in chronological order. One team will collect rock and water samples, measure temperature and pH and take biological samples from mud and water. The other team will be doing surveying work, such as measuring the walls of the cave and studying habitability.
Back at mission control in the HUB, there will be three computers receiving the data and communicating with the teams. Amber Walser (junior-psychology) will be taking vital signs such as heart rate and blood pressure.
"I completed personality profiles on the terranauts and the whole class of nine people," she said. "It was similar to the psychological evaluations that would be done on a real mission -- it also involves studying the mind sets of the astronauts, before during and after the mission."
There will also be a multimedia presentation of pictures at mission control.
This project is a great collaboration of many disciplines including art, psychology, information sciences and technology, biologists and simulation specialists, Silva said.
"The idea of STS is to bring together science and liberal arts," he said. "If we are to go colonize another planet, we need interdisciplinary team for the different pieces of society."
Some team members said they hope to raise awareness of space exploration through this project.
"Who knows, maybe there will be a kid there that might get interested and pursue a career relating to space colonization or work for NASA because of an interest sparked through our project," Walser said.
