AstroAccess, the most current mission from the SciAccess Initiative, which intends to make STEM (science, technology, mathematics and engineering) more available, will fly a crew of 12 disability ambassadors on a weightless parabolic flight. The 12 ambassadors, who have mobility, vision and hearing impairments, will check how available the flight environment is both throughout weightlessness and periods of high gravity. (Image credit: Zero-G)On the flight, the group of ambassadors, understood as the Flight 1 Ambassador Team, will not just experience weightlessness and periods of high gravity; they will also complete experiments and demonstrations.
The twelve disability ambassadors of AstroAccess. (Image credit: AstroAccess)Twelve disability ambassadors will fly weightlessly on Sunday (Oct. 17) as part of an effort to advance special needs addition in area. AstroAccess, the most recent objective from the SciAccess Initiative, which aims to make STEM (science, engineering, innovation and mathematics) more available, will fly a team of 12 special needs ambassadors on a weightless parabolic flight. The flight will take off on Sunday from Long Beach, California, aboard Zero Gravity Corporations (Zero-G) “G-Force One” plane, which flies in a parabolic arc pattern that produces short periods of weightlessness in its cabin. The 12 ambassadors, who have mobility, hearing and vision specials needs, will test how accessible the flight environment is both during weightlessness and durations of high gravity. (During parabolic flights, periods of weightlessness occur between periods of high gravity). The ambassadors on the flight are a different lot, consisting of researchers, veterans, artists and engineers. Related: How to end up being an astronautTwelve disability ambassadors will fly on a Zero-G flight on Oct. 17. (Image credit: Zero-G)On the flight, the team of ambassadors, called the Flight 1 Ambassador Team, will not simply experience weightlessness and durations of high gravity; they will likewise complete presentations and experiments. They will utilize their experience to see how the physical environment onboard spacecraft might be created or modified to be accessible to spaceflyers no matter special needs, according to a statement from AstroAccess.The jobs set out for the team include examining the physical environment for accessibility, communicating security procedures utilizing multi-sensory methods and collecting data from demonstrations and experiments completed while weightless. “We are honored to unveil the team for our inaugural flight, which guarantees to represent a historic action in the mission to open space for all. Each of our ambassadors brings incredible experience and a wealth of proficiency to our group,” George Whitesides, the co-project lead of AstroAccess and chair of the Space Advisory Board for Virgin Galactic, stated in the same statement. The Flight 1 Ambassador Team will include Sina Bahram, a scientist, computer system scientist and availability consultant; Dana Bolles, a science communications specialist who formerly worked as a NASA payload security engineer; Mary Cooper, an aerospace engineering and computer science student; Eric Ingram, the creator and CEO of the space technology business SCOUT; Centra (Ce-Ce) Mazyck, an Army veteran jumpmaster, public speaker and Paralympic athlete; Mona Minkara, an assistant bioengineering professor at Northeastern University; Viktoria Modesta, a bionic pop artist; Zuby Onwuta, an Army veteran and innovator with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Sawyer Rosenstein, a news manufacturer at WPBF 25 and host of the Talking Space podcast; Eric Shear, a chemical engineering graduate student; Apurva Varia, a NASA mission operation director; and Sheri Wells-Jensen, an associate teacher of linguistics at Bowling Green State University. “Im enjoyed be joining the AstroAccess team to make space available by design. So often we make style decisions in advance that are exclusionary to whole segments of the population. Thats why Im so thrilled about space. Space, to me, is a blank canvas,” Bahram said in the statement.”We are only at the beginning of this journey, but I am currently delighted to see what can be achieved by getting rid of barriers to area, motivating the future generations to pursue professions in aerospace and other STEM industries, and the advantage this will have on humankind,” Bahram added.Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.