12:30pm EST., Friday February 16th

Presenting Live via Zoom

Flight Research – Steppingstone to Space

We marvel at images of astronauts working in or outside the ISS and on the surface of the Moon.  A lot of preparation and training as well as adapting to unexpected situations encountered makes those efforts possible.  A critical part of the preparation and training is research during simulated flight conditions to test the function of equipment, instruments, procedures, and human response to the flight environment.  This flight research can be conducted in drop towers, parabolic flight aircraft, suborbital flight spacecraft, and spacecraft in low Earth orbit where different levels of “reduced gravity”can be created for a few seconds to many months.  Some of this research is fully automated while other research is human-tended and some research is a mix of both or hybrid projects.  Examples from each type of research will be described.

George Pantalos has been a cardiovascular explorer for over 50 years.  That effort has included the development of surgical devices and procedures to make the research projects possible.  He is a Professor of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Louisville.

George has also collaborated with NASA helping to understand cardiovascular adaptation to the weightlessness of space flight.  Other reduced gravity research has included delivery of chest compressions for CPR in 0-G, organ perfusion in 0-G, and the development of medical technologies for exploration space missions. George has flown 60 NASA-sponsored research missions on parabolic flight aircraft.