College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

• Water ride

  Iowa State faculty members go on the ride of their lives - all in the name of science.

  
  
• Everything in the experiment was timed down to the second. At least that's what Marc Porter, professor of chemistry, and his colleagues from Iowa State's Microanalytical Instrumentation Center (MIC) thought.
  
  But something happens to individuals when they get into a weightless situation. Your "to-do" list doesn't always get done.
  
  "We broke up our procedures into small pieces," Porter said. "We wanted to go through the experiment several times, but we barely got one done."
  
  Porter and the Iowa State team worked with scientists from NASA's Johnson Space Center to develop novel instrumentation for monitoring the quality of spacecraft drinking water. The first test of such technology occurred last spring when Porter and his colleagues flew on NASA's KC-135 reduced-gravity aircraft.
  
  The plane, affectionately known as the "Vomit Comet," performs a series of loops or parabolic arcs which causes brief periods (25 seconds) of zero-gravity conditions. The Iowa State group flew four sets of 10 loops in two hours, taking turns flying over a two-day period.
  
  Those loops cause most of the scientists taking part in the flight to become nauseous. It is also more difficult to conduct the experiments.
  
  "The flight is about as much fun and the least amount of fun one can have," Porter said. "The flight not only tested the experiment, but the experimenters as well.
  
  "We got behind on our experiments pretty quickly."Regardless of the level of fun and the limited experiment time, the Iowa State group did come away with positive results.
  
  The instrument developed and tested on the NASA flight is essentially a small analysis system that can detect levels of iodine or silver, the two chemicals used to treat water in space. The research is necessary as spacecraft designers look to recycle a higher percentage of water to meet the demands of longer flights.
  
  "If too little iodine is used, then the water tastes bad," said Porter, who is the director of the MIC. "But if the levels of iodine are too high, then it can cause thyroid problems.
  
  "Even though we only ran the experiment once, we got enough data - not as much as we wanted to - but enough to make sure that the instrumentation works," said Porter.
  
  Porter hopes the Iowa State group will develop lightweight, miniaturized systems that solve a number of the problems associated with monitoring and controlling water quality on manned spacecraft. While the first test showed that the basic technology works in zero gravity, the next step is to automate the entire system. The researchers hope to design and build a prototype of such a system and test it on another KC-135 flight within six months.
  
  The $300,000 a year, three-year project is one of 14 projects awarded grants under a NASA effort to advance human support technologies. Porter's team received their grant because of its expertise in diverse areas such as analytical chemistry, electrochemical sensing and microelectronics.
  
  In addition to Porter, MIC researchers that flew on the KC-135 included visiting professors Matteo Arena and Duane Weisshaar.
  
  The Iowa State team is working with scientists in the Space Water Quality group at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and at Wyle Laboratories, the NASA contractor for water quality projects.
  
  

Around LAS
October 1-7, 2001

Ames, Iowa 50011, (515) 294-4111. Published by: University Relations, online@iastate.edu. Copyright © 1995-2004, Iowa State University of Science and Technology. All rights reserved.

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