FLIGHT OPPORTUNITIES COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE WEBINAR
Shared Experiences in Space: Learning from Each Other in the Suborbital Flight Community
Speakers:
- George Pantalos, Ph.D., University of Louisville
- Rob Ferl, Ph.D., University of Florida
April 7, 2021
Abstract
When preparing for suborbital flight tests, connecting with and learning from the greater space community can help reduce risks related to technology development, experiment design, and flight integration, as well as lead researchers to new future opportunities. In this session, experienced Flight Opportunities researchers Dr. George Pantalos and Dr. Robert Ferl will outline their own experience with building community relationships, share tips for getting the most out of these interactions, and discuss how their peers have helped improve their work. This webinar will be helpful for newcomers to Flight Opportunities hoping to lean on the community for support, as well as veteran investigators interested in both elevating their own research and sharing their experience with others.
Flight Opportunities encourages the community to engage in these conversations, and participants are welcome to submit questions prior to the webinar to enable more directed responses. Please send questions to nasa-flightopportunities@mail.nasa.gov.
Download the slides
Speaker Bios
Dr. George Pantalos has been a cardiovascular explorer for over 45 years and has collaborated with NASA to understand cardiovascular adaptation to the weightlessness of space flight and the return to Earth. He has been a professor of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery and a professor of bioengineering at the University of Louisville, in partnership with Jewish Hospital and Norton Children’s Hospital, since July 2000. George has flown 48 research missions on parabolic flight aircraft and led the development of a cardiovascular diastolic function experiment – including an instrumented artificial heart beating on a circulation simulator – that flew twice on the Space Shuttle Discovery. Other reduced gravity research projects have included delivery of effective chest compressions for CPR as well as organ perfusion in zero gravity, in addition to the development of a surgical capability for exploration space missions, which is in final preparation for a suborbital flight test.
Dr. Rob Ferl is a distinguished professor and the assistant vice president for research at the University of Florida. He studies gene expression in response to environmental change, specifically in spaceflight and extraterrestrial habitats. Rob co-chairs the Committee on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space for the National Academies of Science and is a past president of the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research. Among his honors are the 2016 NASA Medal of Honor for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and the 2016 AIAA Jeffries Aerospace Medicine and Life Sciences Research Award. While a dedicated lab geek, he enjoys and advocates for the field experiential side of science – he and his lab have flown with their experiments on a number of research aircraft, including parabolic aircraft and suborbital vehicles, to study the microgravity environment and develop flight hardware for understanding biological effects of spaceflight. Rob also conducts ground-based science on space-related environmental effects on terrestrial biology and works within planetary exploration analogs, including the Haughton Mars Project in the Arctic and in Antarctic venues.
