Event
MSE Seminar - Dr. D. Elizabeth Pugel, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Friday, September 4, 2009
1:00 p.m.
Room 2108, Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Bldg.
Annette Mateus
301 405 5207
amateus@umd.edu
"Indiana Jones and the Search for Apollo-Modern Day Adventures in Materials Science"
The stage is set as a warehouse lined with dusty wooden crates in the Smithsonian Institution?s Air and Space Museum Archives; nights poring over 40-plus year old documentation, interviews with the men and women of the Apollo era; fabrication, testing, and measurement at seven NASA field centers. Such is life in the applied research world of materials science a world that brings with it many an adventure. Tasked with the development and production of two composite-based ablative heat shields to protect astronauts on re-entry to Earth?s atmosphere for post-Shuttle missions, my team and I embarked on an interdisciplinary journey into a little-known realm of archaeological materials development. Armed with history, cracking fiber optical whips for non-destructive analysis and testing, constrained by boulders of mechanical, aerothermal, environmental and other requirements-this collaborative team of scientists, engineers, historians, museum archivists, and machinists set out on a rich experimental expedition and unearthed the historical process for fabricating the Apollo heat shield, revising it with modern technological twists. Come along as we relive this adventure in materials science and celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo Moon Landing.
For more information, contact Annette Mateus at (301) 405-5207 or amateus@umd.edu.
