On July 30, the answer came from space: a call for human unity during a time of bitter conflicts, articulated by someone who is—quite literally—above it all.

“We watch the news up here every night, and we’re aware of what is going on in the world,” said Ricky Arnold, a NASA flight engineer aboard the International Space Station, speaking via live webcast. He cited the crew’s cooperative efforts as an example of what can happen when people from diverse nations work together.

Haig and her fellow interns watched from NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

“It was really exciting,” said Haig, who is getting ready for the fall quarter at Stanford, where she will pursue a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics.

The experience, part of a NASA educational program, fueled her enthusiasm for becoming an aerospace engineer and, hopefully, an astronaut herself one day. It also provided a thrilling coda to an undergraduate career that was heavy on science and grant-funded scientific research but also on classic humanistic aspects of Jesuit education.

Science Studies Inflected with Jesuit Values

Haig graduated summa cum laude from Fordham in May with a double major: engineering physics, with a concentration in mechanical engineering, and classical civilization. At NASA in Cleveland, she spent the summer in the ARETEP (Aeronautics Research and Engineering Team) program, studying the movement of urban air masses with an eye toward safety standards for new aerial vehicles that could one day be zipping around city skies.

Aviation is a longtime interest. In high school, she volunteered at an aviation museum near her Long Island home and enjoyed working with the museum’s elderly docents—an experience that led her to volunteer at Fordham as an aide to a former missionary—Richard Hoar, S.J.—living in the Murray-Weigel Hall retirement residence on the Rose Hill campus. “He actually has a master’s degree in physics, so it was a great fit,” Haig said.

A student in the honors program, she loved the program’s classics-related courses and kept signing up for more of them—Roman art, Latin, Greek. “Before I knew it, I had a major,” she said. For her senior thesis, she melded her two majors by examining how the Romans, known as great engineers, might have managed to fill the Colosseum with water for mock naval battles, as some have suggested they did.

There’s little evidence this happened. However, “the drains underneath the Colosseum are a lot larger than they would need to be just for rain water and waste water,” Haig said.

She also pursued varied scientific research projects. During the summer between sophomore and junior years, a Fordham Undergraduate Research Grant made it possible for her to work with physics professor Stephen Holler, Ph.D., on developing a new optical-fiber probe for use in analyzing tumors. For her second undergraduate research project, she worked at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago between junior and senior year and diagnosed a malfunction in the accelerator’s monitoring components.

She traveled to present her research at academic conclaves on the West Coast, thanks to travel grants provided by the University, and recently was awarded the Fordham College Alumni Association’s Undergraduate Research Symposium grant.

Haig suspects that her research helped her attain the NASA internship, a long-sought prize.

“I’ve been applying for the NASA program for a while, for at least a couple of summers, and I guess this summer I finally had enough research experience,” she said.

She found the internship to be a cornucopia for the scientifically curious. In addition to getting intensive introductions to aerodynamics and computational fluid dynamics, Haig has found scientists and engineers readily responsive to her email queries.

“I’ve found everybody to be so helpful and so willing to talk about their projects,” she said. “There are people working on missions that are going to Mars, stuff that’s going into deep space eventually. People say, ‘Yeah, come on over.’ I’ve been able to make so many connections.”

Aiming a Question at the Heavens

When she was chosen to record a question for the space station’s astronauts, she moved away from the technical and leaned toward the liberal arts, asking a question with a philosophical bent: “In today’s world, what is the most compelling reason to engage in human spaceflight?”

In his answer, Ricky Arnold, the NASA flight engineer, cited the scientific research conducted in space, as well as the crew’s perspective—“a higher plane of agreement”—on all the strife occurring far below.

“We have two Russians, three Americans, and a German right now,” he said, bobbing up and down in the zero gravity and casually moving his hands away from the microphone floating in front of him. “We have found something we all believe in, and the operations both here and on the ground are seamless because we all believe in the same thing. …

“There’s a really powerful message to all humans about what we as a species … are capable of when we put aside differences and focus on higher objectives as a species.”

Watch NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold’s webcast below. Bernadette Haig poses her question at the 5:22 mark. 

It had a kind of transcendent appeal, said filmmaker Carla Jackson, FCLC ’93, the administrator of the Fordham Theatre program. “We all stopped for a moment … to share something that science can explain, but that is still wonderfully magical,” she said. “I think that America needed this moment.”

As it happens, she had spent the prior months promoting a film that puts a spotlight on eclipses as well as the need to remove barriers so people from diverse backgrounds can realize their dreams of working in science.

Jackson co-produced the film, Black Suns: An Astrophysics Adventure, which is about two African-American astrophysicists who traveled the world to study eclipses. The film was directed by her husband, Kelvin Phillips, with whom Jackson runs a production company called the Bridge, short for “the bridge between dreaming and doing,” as she put it in an interview about the film with WFUV’s Fordham Conversations. (Go to the end of this story to listen to the interview.)

Narrated and co-produced by award-winning cultural astronomer Jarita Holbrook, Ph.D., the documentary centers on Alphonse Sterling, Ph.D., of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and Hakeem Oluseyi, Ph.D., of the Florida Institute of Technology, who traveled to eclipse sites as part of their research involving the solar atmosphere.

The Film’s Origins

Jackson and her husband were drawn to the project because they “try to tell stories that don’t generally get told,” she said. The idea for the film came from Holbrook, who wanted to highlight people of color who are trying to realize their dreams, and to emphasize that “we as a society have to work harder to make sure that we don’t shut doors” to them, Jackson said in the Fordham Conversations interview.

Oluseyi had many barriers to overcome. He grew up with poverty, homelessness, and gang pressures, but still managed to nurture an interest in science and earn a doctorate from Stanford. When he was heading off to college, as the documentary relates, his mother “gave him a hug and a gun,” Jackson said, because of the life his family had known. “They were actually taking care of him,” she said.

Science opened doors for him and leveled the playing field. “People weren’t looking at him as an African American per se; they were looking at him as a budding scientist,” Jackson said.

The film is mainly the story of Sterling and Oluseyi and “some of the difficulties and also some of the wonderful things that have happened along the way” as they pursued science and studied eclipses, she said.

“The whole point of the film is to show that … being a scientist isn’t always just sitting behind a desk and looking at [a]microscope of some sort,” Jackson said. “It’s not always that. And it’s also to show that whatever your background, there’s almost always a way to make something happen in your world if you are determined enough to do it.”

Listen to Carla Jackson being interviewed by Robin Shannon on WFUV’s Fordham Conversations:

The collaborative aims to pursue excellence and innovation in medical, behavioral, and environmental research, education, and technology development.

Operating under the auspices of GSS, the collaborative will promote interdisciplinary research across the University, as well as between the University and its external partners and communities—for instance, the Bronx Science Consortium. Debra McPhee, Ph.D., dean of GSS, will oversee the collaborative at Fordham, while Cagle will serve as a visiting professor at GSS. In this position, Cagle will offer her research and medical expertise and provide access to the innovative technologies and research capabilities of her professional affiliates.

“This partnership will offer unique opportunities not just at GSS, but for faculty and students across disciplines at Fordham,” McPhee said.

A partnership between Cagle and McPhee began long before the collaborative came into being. The pair collaborated on advanced technology projects in Silicon Valley while McPhee was serving as chief operating officer for an online health education and technology company in Palo Alto, California.

When McPhee became the dean of GSS in 2013, the two innovators saw an opportunity for continued collaboration.

“Fordham stepped up in a huge way to support that dialogue, and from there we approached the NASA Ames Research Center and shared our vision with them,” Cagle said. “They were equally supportive and very honored to be able to bring Fordham University into the relationship with the agency.”

Fordham researchers will have the opportunity to become involved with Cagle’s ongoing projects—such as NASA’s plans to send a mission to Mars, to dispatch a 100-year starship, and, ultimately, to initiate human exploration and settlement in deep space.

Factoring psychological, social, and behavioral dynamics into these missions is so important, Cagle said, that the kind of expertise Fordham researchers could offer ranks as high as managing radiation exposure and maintaining crew health and fitness.

“At the core of these missions is a human element in partnership with robotics—but you’re always going to need the human there to make real-time decisions,” Cagle said. “That’s why the psychosocial components that GSS deals with are right up there in the top three make-or-break challenges that we face when it comes to humans thriving in space.”

The collaborative, McPhee said, will also open up opportunities “to compete for research funding not currently available to members of the Fordham community, specifically NASA research RFPs (requests for proposals).”

The initiative is contracted for three years, but McPhee and Cagle anticipate a long-lasting partnership.

“It’ll be a bold new world—or maybe new worlds,” Cagle said.

“When you look at Earth from space, you see many amazing things. But what you don’t see are borders,” Dr. Cagle said. “We have to create a new conversation in order to create a world without borders. It’s time to eradicate [them]from without.”

At GSS, that conversation has already begun.

In partnership with Cagle, Fordham has launched the Interdisciplinary Collaborative on Health, Environment, and Human Performance. The collaborative aims to pursue excellence and innovation in medical, behavioral, and environmental research, education, and technology development.

Operating under the auspices of GSS, the collaborative will promote interdisciplinary research across the University, as well as between the University and its external partners and communities; for instance, the Bronx Science Consortium. Debra McPhee, Ph.D., dean of GSS, will oversee the collaborative at Fordham, while Cagle will serve as a visiting professor at GSS. In this position, Cagle will offer her research and medical expertise and provide access to the innovative technologies and research capabilities of her professional affiliates.

“This partnership will offer unique research and learning opportunities not just at GSS, but for faculty and students across disciplines at Fordham,” McPhee said.

A partnership between Cagle and McPhee began long before the collaborative came into being. The pair collaborated on advanced technology projects in Silicon Valley while McPhee was serving as chief operating officer for an online health education and technology company in Palo Alto, California.

When McPhee became the dean of GSS in 2013, the two innovators saw an opportunity for continued collaboration.

“Fordham stepped up in a huge way to support that dialogue, and from there we approached the NASA Ames Research Center and shared our vision with them,” Cagle said. “They were equally supportive and very honored to be able to bring Fordham University into the relationship with the agency.”

Fordham researchers will have the opportunity to become involved with Cagle’s ongoing projects—such as NASA’s plans to send a mission to Mars, to dispatch a 100-year starship, and, ultimately, to initiate human exploration and settlement in deep space.

“We would need to look at the psychological, social, and behavioral dynamics that would go into long-duration exploration and even human colonization of other planets,” she said, noting the need for psychologists, political scientists, historians, and more.

While these missions may sound like mere sci-fi, Cagle said that undertaking them is not a matter of if, but when. Already, a handful of private sector enterprises are looking to industrialize space, including harvesting sustainable sources of space-based fuel and other resources, creating a space-bearing transportation system to obtain these materials, and even commencing space tourism.

“[NASA’s] plan is to look toward a Mars mission as early as 2030, which is right around the corner. And, within the next 18 months, we’re planning to place two NASA astronauts on the International Space Station for a one-year mission to see how they perform of the course of year, both physically and psychologically,” she said. “We’re racing the clock, but when your typical speed limit is Mach 25, we’re up to the task.”

Factoring psychosocial dynamics into these missions is so important, Cagle said, that the kind of expertise Fordham researchers could offer ranks as high as managing radiation exposure and maintaining crew health and fitness.

“At the core of these missions is a human element in partnership with robotics—but you’re always going to need the human there to make real-time decisions,” Cagle said. “That’s why the psychosocial and behavioral components that GSS deals with are right up there in the top three make-or-break challenges that we face when it comes to humans thriving in space.”

A key factor of the collaborative, McPhee said, is to open up opportunities “to compete for research funding not currently available to members of the Fordham community, specifically NASA research RFPs (requests for proposals).”

The initiative is contracted for three years, but McPhee and Cagle anticipate a long-lasting partnership.

“It’ll be a bold new world—or maybe new worlds,” Cagle said.

1. Humans have built five objects
that have left or are about to leave the solar system.

Once they leave, they will wander in various directions away from our sun into the interstellar medium. Even if our planet were to be destroyed today, these five spacecraft would still be traveling out towards the cosmos as remnants of humanity. The farthest of the five, indeed the farthest human-made object, is Voyager 1, which is about 12 billion miles away from the Earth and still transmitting data back.

2. The most exciting activity in space exploration in recent years has been in robotic exploration.

In 2005, a European space probe successfully landed on Saturn’s moon Titan. Currently, a NASA probe known as New Horizons is speeding its way to the dwarf planet Pluto (which it should reach in the summer of 2015). In 2006, a spacecraft called Stardust parachuted down in a remote range in Utah, having flown into a comet at a speed of 3.7 miles per second, captured its dust, and brought it back to Earth. Another NASA spacecraft, NEAR, successfully landed on the asteroid Eros in 2001.

3. Most of the money the world spends on civilian space activities is not for exploration or fundamental science but rather for what practitioners call “applications” goals.

Space activities now provide daily services to both scientists and citizens that we take for granted. These include satellites that:

• assess and analyze the natural resources of the Earth using remote sensing;

• help industries such as agriculture and fisheries to thrive;

• study climate change;

• help save people and resources from natural disasters such as cyclones, earthquakes, floods, and droughts;

• enable international agencies to provide humanitarian assistance during crises;

• help us locate ourselves through the Global Positioning System (GPS);

• tell us detailed weather predictions;

• and support telecommunications over mobile phones, TV broadcasting, and the Internet.

4. The annual NASA budget is much much (much) smaller than the following things:

The amount we spend annually on pizza. Or tobacco. Or illegal drugs. Or gambling. The annual budget of NASA is about 0.5 percent of our gross national product, or about $17.6 billion. By comparison, federal spending on other programs includes $1 trillion (defense, veteran’s services, and homeland security), $78.3 billion (health and human services), and $71.2 billion (education). 

5. For the past 13 years and counting, there has always been someone in space.

Since October 31, 2000, when three astronauts lifted off to live aboard the International Space Station that orbits the Earth, crews have constantly rotated aboard that facility, maintaining a continuous human presence in space. So whenever you look up into the sky, no matter the time of day or night, you can be confident that there are astronauts living and working in space. But are long stretches in space healthy? Medical experts concede that very long-term stays, such as the 437 days-in-space record held by Russian astronaut Valery Polyakov, can have serious negative consequences to human health, including loss of bone mass, decrease in eyesight, loss of appetite, and problems in blood flow. Missions beyond Earth orbit can make these problems much worse due to the dangers of cosmic radiation.

6. The United States has a parallel secret space program that is not run by NASA but rather by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

The NRO has the largest budget of any U.S. intelligence agency, comparable in size to that of NASA. (Its actual budget is classified). Most of the NRO’s activities are conducted in secret, and the agency does not describe its activities (which includes spying) in any detail. Many of their (very) expensive satellites are launched from a site in Southern California (instead of Cape Canaveral in Florida). Imagery collected by the NRO is analyzed by another little-known organization, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

7. The foundation of the modern rocket is the German V-2 built by German scientists and engineers during World War II.

Many of the Germans who worked on the V-2 later came to the United States and worked on the development of the Saturn rocket that lifted American astronauts to the Moon. Many of these men had been active Nazis, but their unsavory pasts were whitewashed out of history in service of the Cold War.  For example, Arthur Rudolph, who was NASA’s project director for Saturn was involved in atrocities at the infamous Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Germany. In the early 1980s, when the truth about his activities came out, Rudolph renounced his American citizenship and fled the United States rather than face war crimes trials.

8. Polls suggest that about 6 percent of the American population still believes that the Moon landings were faked.

In other countries, this number is much higher, as high as 28 percent in a recent Russian poll. Belief in the “faked Moon landings” taps into a deep-rooted belief in conspiracies in American culture, such as those about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the death of Elvis, UFOS, 9/11, and such. The persistence of such beliefs also perhaps highlights a powerful current of hostility toward science in American culture (such as that manifest in creationism).

-By Asif Siddiqi

On June 13 of this year, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa reentered the Earth’s atmosphere in a brilliant fireball of light, after a seven-year journey collecting samples from the asteroid Itokawa.

One lucky Fordham University junior was there to see it.

Erin Leidy, a physics major at the Rose Hill campus, was part of a team of international scientists aboard NASA’s DC-8 Airborne Observatory, a plane equipped specifically to observe and record reentry data. The team, which included scientists from the U.S., Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands, traveled to the Australian outback to witness the high-speed homecoming as the spaceship fell to the earth at a speed of 12.2 kilometers per second, or over 25,000 miles per hour.

As the only intern on board, participating through the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, Leidy not only witnessed the spectacle, but collaborated with NASA scientist Dr. Petrus Jenniskens on analyzing the ships’ re-entry spectra, or light waves, for the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.)

NASA’s flying laboratory has been used to study re-entry during the returns of the 2004 Genesis, the 2006 Stardust, and the 2008 ATV-1 missions. It is equipped with optical windows and an instrument known as ASTRO, a special spectrograph camera that can record high ranges of visible light spectra. That data is then analyzed to measure (through color and wavelength analysis) chemical elements present when the capsule streaks into the earth’s atmosphere, and ultimately to measure the effectiveness of the capsule’s heat shield and the conditions that ships are subjected to.

When a ship re-enters the earth’s atmosphere, its capsule typically separates from the main, larger “bus” of the spacecraft, which burns up in the atmosphere. A hot “shock wave” of energy is created on the capsule’s surface, compressing the free stream of air and resulting in tremendous heat buildup on the capsule’s shield.

Leidy’s part in the operation was to maintain ASTRO, keeping it in focus and saving images to a laptop. ASTRO was limited in what it could capture in a spectral photo of because it has a fixed mounting in the airplane and the Itokawa was traveling too fast to be in the field of view for long. But ASTRO was able to capture one image of the re-entry when it was at its “hottest,” that is, a spectral image of the capsule as it caused a shock wave and as material coming off the surface of the capsule penetrated that shock wave. It also got five separate spectral readings on the disintegrating bus as it plunged toward the earth.

The color photograph at the top of the page, taken by Leidy and Ron Dantowitz, shows the spectral images of the capsule (left) and bus fragments (right).

In addition to working on the research, Leidy was able to witness the event through a window on the plane: “It was spectacular – one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

The preliminary results from the images showed the presence of sodium, lithium from batteries on the ship, oxygen, calcium and a carbon plus nitrogen compound which Leidy says helps analyze the heat from the re-entry. The data will eventually help researchers reconstruct how objects interact in the upper atmosphere and even help build better heat shields.

“I feel really lucky to have had the opportunity to work with an international team of established scientists, as well as being given the responsibility of the instrument like ASTRO,” said Leidy, who hopes for a career in astrophysics and planetary science. “It taught me so much more than an experiment in a laboratory could have.”

In fact, said Leidy, this type of re-entry research is hard to recreate in a laboratory because of the incredible speeds involved.

“These airborne observations are rare occurrences,” she said.

And as for the material collected inside the capsule during the seven-year journey to an asteroid that orbits somewhere between Earth and Mars? It’s back to Japan for analysis.

– Janet Sassi