Aerospace research is a familiar endeavor in the College of Engineering and at the University of Kentucky. “There has been a long history of aerospace-related programs here at UK,” says Dr. Suzanne Smith, the Donald and Gertrude Lester Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kentucky.
She should know. As the lead faculty adviser on the BIG BLUE Mars Airplane project in the mid-2000s, Smith led a multidisciplinary team of UK students in the development and testing of an inflatable-wing unmanned aircraft. Over 300 university students combined aeronautics and space research as they developed and conducted four successful high-altitude experiments. With these, over 400 low-altitude flight tests demonstrated the feasibility of inflatable wings for extraterrestrial exploration and for Earth-based defense applications of deployable unmanned aircraft.
Now, Dr. Smith has a new mission: director of NASA Kentucky, a NASA-funded initiative located in the CRMS Building on UK’s campus that oversees both the Kentucky Space Grant Consortium and NASA EPSCoR Programs for the commonwealth. Associate professor of electrical and computer engineering Dr. Janet Lumpp serves as associate director.
“NASA Kentucky is a program that sponsors research faculty and students at universities across the state,” Smith says. NASA Kentucky is part of NASA’s National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, initiated in 1989. There are 52 Space Grant consortia across the country, one in each of the 50 states and two more in the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Colleges and universities, industries and other organizations become affiliate members of their local Space Grant programs. Members also administer pre-college and public service education projects in their states. Nationwide, Space Grant includes over 850 affiliates from universities, colleges, industry, museums, science centers, and state and local agencies. Kentucky has had a Space Grant Program since 1992. UK is the new host institution for Space Grant; previously WKU hosted the program.
NASA Kentucky will now be hosted by UK on UK’s campus, serving “not just the University of Kentucky, but universities across the state,” Smith says. Under NASA Kentucky, the Space Grant Consortium currently includes Bellarmine University, Centre College, Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Thomas More College, Transylvania University, the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and Western Kentucky University, as well as the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation and Tribo Flow Separations, LLC.
The mission of NASA Kentucky is simple: build research capacity in the commonwealth. Both students and faculty can help to build this capacity by conducting space- and aeronautics-based research. “More research capacity brings more research money into the state,” Smith says. “And students with aerospace research experience are better employees for aerospace-related companies and that helps build industry.” As industry in the state continues to develop its aerospace capabilities thanks to the contributions of Kentucky students and faculty, that industry can in turn help create new research opportunities, further building research capacity and strengthening Kentucky’s growing aerospace economy.
“The ‘A’ and ‘S’ in ‘NASA’ stand for aeronautics and space,” Smith says, “and this program will fund research in both areas.” NASA Kentucky’s associate director, Dr. Janet Lumpp, agrees. “NASA Kentucky focuses on both space and aviation,” she says. She points out that one of the key areas of interest for the Space Grant program nationwide is a desire to improve the infrastructure of aviation in the United States. “We have a crowded airspace, outdated equipment and an airline hub system that’s inefficient,” she says. “Space Grant sponsored research looks for ways to change that.” Other areas of aviation research that Smith and Lumpp are seeing interest in include unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), airport management, air traffic control and new commercial aircraft design. That’s beside the space exploration aspects of NASA, which include geology, astronomy and robotics.
NASA Kentucky will fund fellowships and scholarships for students pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (or STEM), as well as curriculum enhancement and faculty development. Smith calls this progression a “pathway of opportunities.” She says, “We work with students to take advantage of skill-building opportunities, which can be included along a path to their careers.”
One key part of NASA Kentucky is the funding of graduate and undergraduate fellowships for projects either in collaboration with NASA or that are of interest to NASA. “We want to have students who are interested in aerospace from high school to college,” Smith says. “We want to make them aware of what their options are in Kentucky to pursue aerospace-related interests.”
“This summer we had six students statewide who spent the summer at NASA sites,” Smith says. Other undergraduate students from across Kentucky will be sponsored by the program for one-on-one mentored work with faculty. Some students will spend a summer at NASA working with NASA researchers. And starting in 2011, NASA Kentucky plans to send students to work in paid internships for aerospace-aligned Kentucky companies in a two-for-one program: if a company hires one student the program pays for a second one. Smith says NASA Kentucky plans to have at least four pairs of Kentucky students working next year.
Aerospace experiences have been seen to encourage new aerospace opportunities, Smith explains. She cites as an example the 1997 UK students who flew on NASA’s “Vomit Comet” conducting microgravity experiments, sponsored by Space Grant. “Four years later some of those students led the BIG BLUE Mars Airplane program,” she explains, and then some of the BIG BLUE students went on to be key contributors to KySat1. These were in turn the first group of students involved with the enterprise that would develop into Kentucky Space, a partnership between several Kentucky colleges and universities that builds satellites and hardware for the International Space Station. “Kentucky Space students go to NASA facilities, work with NASA researchers and are on conference calls with NASA every week.” The Space Systems Lab of the Kentucky Space consortium is a unique research facility located at UK. “The state of Kentucky is now in space on the International Space Station,” Smith says. “Our goal at NASA Kentucky is to foster similar examples of one program contributing to the next while building aerospace research and opportunities for faculty and students across Kentucky,” Smith says.