Two Manteca Unified instructors have their eyes on the stars.
Although not venturing into space, and not technically astronauts, Larry Grimes of Sierra High School and Jeff Baldwin of Lathrop High School are getting ready to take flight on SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy.
“We are not going to outer space; we are going to the top of the stratosphere is all. We are a long way from space,” Grimes explained.
Baldwin, who has a pilot’s license and his own small plane, added, “We will be three miles higher up than commercial air traffic, between 41,000 and 49,000 feet high.”
“We are Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors,” said Grimes. “We will be working with University researchers on astronomical targets with the equipment attached to a huge infrared telescope.”
According to the SOFIA science center, “SOFIA is an 80/20 partnership of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), consisting of an extensively modified Boeing 747SP aircraft carrying a reflecting telescope with an effective diameter of 2.5 meters (100 inches). The aircraft is based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, Calif.”
Assisting University researchers is great for the University, but how does it benefit Manteca Unified?
“We will have access to all of the data,” said Grimes, “But our role is to bring it back to our students and our peers to share with them what is going on in science. We are flying so that we can bring it back to our schools.”
Scheduled to leave Oct. 16, the Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors will be working with the SOFIA team for one week, and will return Oct. 21. They will be taking two high-altitude flights aboard SOFIA, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday of that week. Each flight will be at night and will last for 10-12 hours.
Although only a week long, Grimes and Baldwin have been working very hard to get ready for this opportunity.
“The students are very excited. Partly they pick up my excitement because I am just thrilled to be doing this,” said Grimes. “We have been working on this for two years.”
Growing suddenly serious, Grimes continued, “About a year and half ago, I had an accident and broke my neck. That lost me the flight status. I couldn’t do anything; I was pretty paralyzed. For me at least, it has been almost a year of battling back to mobility. I’ve got my flight status back, and we are good to go, and I am just thrilled. This was my main motivation of why I tolerated a year of just really terrible physical therapy. It is going to be great!”
Additional study was also needed. “We did an entire astronomy program all summer long through Montana State. It was surprisingly rigorous,” said Baldwin. “I didn’t think I was going to learn anything, but I did and I am bringing that content into my class already.
“My concept of stellar evolution was a little bit off, but that course helped straighten it out. The hemispheres of planets are a little better in my brain now, so that helps my class. The enthusiasm we are experiencing is contagious.”
Commenting further on the telescope inside the plane, Baldwin said, “I’m a pilot and an astronomer, and now I get to go in a pane with an enormous telescope that is bigger than the Hubble space telescope. Hubble is longer, but the telescope is measured by the optic mirror, and this one is a couple of inches bigger than Hubble.”
Explaining what it means to be looking at infrared, Baldwin added, “We are looking at longer wavelengths. This telescope has instruments that span a wide range of infrared wavelengths.”
“That is the only reason why we fly high. We have to get above all that water vapor in the Troposphere,” said Grimes. “We can’t get infrared down here because the water vapor in the atmosphere absorbs all the infrared radiation.”
When looking at things far away through a telescope, the observer must take into account that the Earth is moving, and so is the object he is looking at.
“What’s interesting about this flight is that the airplane has to compensate for the sidereal rotation of the earth,” explained Baldwin. “So, the airplane has to slowly rotate to the right to keep the target in the telescope.”
“It should be an interesting flight because they get to altitude as fast as they can. It should be a pretty dramatic flight,” said Grimes.
“Most aircraft have an internal pressure of 7,200 feet, but for us it will feel like we are at 10,000 feet, even though we are flying at 49,000 feet,” said Baldwin. “We could get pretty winded up there.”
In addition to the flights, Grimes and Baldwin will visit the Space Shuttle Endeavor, Griffith and Wilson Observatories, and the Mirror and Instrument Lab. “It will be a jam packed week of 14-16 hour days,” said Grimes.
“SOFIA knows that they want you to go back and serve for two years, to help get kids fired up in STEM,” said Baldwin. “The cool part about SOFIA is that we are going to be able to distribute everything we experience to our classes, and then spread what we learn to our astronomy clubs.”
In looking toward the future, Grimes offered, “Somebody is alive today, and they are likely in elementary school, but they are going to stand on Mars. Learning must be about lighting a fire, and not just filling a bucket. That is what SOFIA has done for us, that’s for sure!”