|
|
Dr. Mae C. Jemison, First Af
…
| Title |
Dr. Mae C. Jemison, First African-American Woman in Space |
| Full Description |
The first African-American woman in space, Dr. Mae C. Jemison was born on October 17, 1956 in Decatur, Alabama but considers Chicago, Illinois her hometown. She received a Bachelor in Chemical Engineering (and completed the requirements for a Bachelor in African and Afro-American studies) at Stanford University in 1977. Dr. Jemison also received a Doctorate degree in medicine from Cornell University in 1981. After medical school she did post graduate medical training at the Los Angeles County University of Southern California Medical Center. As an area Peace Corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa, she managed the health care delivery system for U.S. Peace Corps and U.S. Embassy personnel. Jemison's background includes work in the areas of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and reproductive biology. She also developed and participated in research projects on the Hepatitis B vaccine and rabies. Jemison was a General Practitioner and attending graduate Engineering classes in Los Angeles when she was named an astronaut candidate in 1987. She flew her first flight as a science mission specialist on STS-47, Spacelab-J, in September 1992. She was co-investigator for the Bone Cell Research Experiment on that mission. In completing her first space flight, Jemison logged 190 hours, 30 minutes and 23 seconds in space. Jemison resigned from NASA in March 1993. In 1994, she founded and began a term as chair of The Earth We Share (TEWS), an annual international science camp where students, aged 12 to 16, work together to solve current global dilemmas. From 1995- 2002 she was a professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College. She is currently director of the Jemison Institute for Advancing Technology in developing countries. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame and several corporate boards of directors on the Texas Governor's State Council for Science and Biotechnology Development. Dr. Jemison published her memoirs, Find Where DE:the Wind Goes:Moments from My Life in 2001. She currently resides in Houston, Texas. |
| Date |
07/1992 |
| NASA Center |
Johnson Space Center |
|
Female Astronauts
| Title |
Female Astronauts |
| Full Description |
Astronauts Dr. N. Jan Davis (left) and Dr. Mae C. Jemison (right) were mission specialists on board the STS-47 mission. Born on November 1, 1953 in Cocoa Beach, Florida, Dr. N. Jan Davis received a Master degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1983 followed by a Doctorate in Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 1985. In 1979 she joined NASA Marshall Space Flight Center as an aerospace engineer. A veteran of three space flights, Dr. Davis has logged over 678 hours in space since becoming an astronaut in 1987. She flew as a mission specialist on STS-47 in 1992 and STS-60 in 1994, and was the payload commander on STS-85 in 1997. In July 1999, she transferred to the Marshall Space Flight Center, where she became Director of Flight Projects. Dr. Mae C. Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, was born on October 17, 1956 in Decatur, Alabama but considers Chicago, Illinois her hometown. She received a Bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering (and completed the requirements for a Bachelor degree in African and Afro-American studies) at Stanford University in 1977, and a Doctorate degree in medicine from Cornell University in 1981. After receiving her doctorate, she worked as a General Practitioner while attending graduate engineering classes in Los Angeles. She was named an astronaut candidate in 1987, and flew her first flight as a science mission specialists on STS-47, Spacelab-J, in September 1992, logging 190 hours, 30 minutes, 23 seconds in space. In March 1993, Dr. Jemison resigned from NASA, thought she still resides in Houston, Texas. She went on to publish her memoirs, Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments from My Life, in 2001. The astronauts are shown preparing to deploy the lower body negative pressure (LBNP) apparatus in this 35mm frame taken in the science module aboard the Earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Endeavor. Fellow astronauts Robert L. Gibson (Commander), Curtis L. Brown (Junior Pilot), Mark C. Lee (Payload Commander), Jay Apt (Mission Specialist), and Mamoru Mohri (Payload Specialist) joined the two on their maiden space flight. The Spacelab-J mission was a joint effort between Japan and the United States. |
| Date |
09/15/1992 |
| NASA Center |
Johnson Space Center |
|
C-140 JetStar landing on Rog
…
JetStar in flight
| Title |
JetStar in flight |
| Description |
This 18-second movie clip shows the NASA Dryden Lockheed C-140 JetStar in flight with its pylon-mounted air-turbine-drive system used to gather information on the acoustic characteristics of subscale advanced design propellers. Data was gathered through 28 flush-mounted microphones on the skin of the aircraft. From 1976 to 1987 the NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio -- today known as the Glenn Research Center -- engaged in research and development of an advanced turboprop concept in partnership with Hamilton Standard, Windsor Locks, Connecticut, the largest manufacturer of propellers in the United States. The Advanced Turboprop Project took its impetus from the energy crisis of the early 1970's and sought to produce swept propeller blades that would increase efficiency and reduce noise. As the project progressed, Pratt & Whitney, Allison Gas Turbine Division of General Motors, General Electric, Gulfstream, Rohr Industries, Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas, among others, also took part. NASA Lewis did the much of the ground research and marshaled the resources of these and other members of the aeronautical community. The team came to include the NASA Ames Research Center, Langley Research Center, and the Ames-Dryden Flight Research Facility (before and after that time, the Dryden Flight Research Center). Together, they brought the propeller to the flight research stage, and the team that worked on the project won the coveted Collier Trophy for its efforts in 1987. To test the acoustics of the propeller the team developed, it mounted propeller models on a C-140 JetStar aircraft fuselage at NASA Dryden. The JetStar was modified with the installation of an air-turbine-drive system. The drive motor, with a test propeller, was mounted on a pylon atop the JetStar. The JetStar was equipped with an array of 28 microphones flush-mounted in the fuselage of the aircraft beneath the propeller. Microphones mounted on the wings and on an accompanying Learjet chase aircraft provided far-field acoustic data. Between May 21, 1981 and August of 1982, the JetStar completed roughly 45 research flights with three different propellers in varying configurations. Dryden engineers analyzed some of the resultant data, while they sent flight tapes to Hamilton Standard, Lewis, and Langley for analysis there. The results indicated a need for noise-reduction technology to keep the noise levels down to the project goals. An improved version of the advanced turboprop underwent flight testing in 1987 on a Gulfstream II over Georgia in 1987. These flight tests verified predictions of a 20- to 30-percent fuel savings. However, with the end of the energy crisis, the need for such savings disappeared, and the Advanced Turboprop Project did not lead to the expected industry-wide adoption of the new propeller systems on transport aircraft. In the 1960s, the same JetStar that was used to test the advanced turboprop had been equipped with an electronic variable-stability, flight-control system. Called then a General Purpose Airborne Simulator (GPAS), the aircraft could duplicate the flight characteristics of a wide variety of advanced aircraft and was used for supersonic transport and general aviation research, and as a training and support system for Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests at Dryden in 1977. Over the years, the JetStar has also been used for a variety of other flight research projects, including laminar-flow-control flight tests in the mid-1980s. |
| Date |
01.01.1981 |
|
|
