Rocket man

Dan Ruby, associate director of the Fleishmann Planetarium and graduate student in UNR’s college of education, is among 26 educators to be accepted to conduct research on NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP outfitted with a 100-inch diameter telescope, allowing astronomy educators to participate in intense, detailed research alongside NASA astronomers.

How did you hear about this program and what made you want to apply?

A friend of a friend was a flight engineer on this project, and this friend sent me this notice, so I kind of filed it away with every other NASA notice I get. But I thought, oh that looks kind of cool, that could be kind of fun. It could be fun getting to fly, but also getting, like, a flight jacket and a mission patch would be cool. Then I realized this was a fairly intense application process. … You have to have a teammate, and my teammate is Matt Oates at Dilworth Middle School [STEM academy]. He’s a guy I know that I thought might be interested. We had to put together an education plan, because it’s not just about teachers having fun, that’s not the point. It worked out pretty well because we get a lot of field trip visitors here [at the planetarium], like 10-15,000 kids each year come for field trips, and that’s a pretty good captive audience that I get to talk to about this stuff, and we get a ton of public visitors too. NASA is very interested in middle school kids, and getting middle school kids interested in science, so that they become high school kids interested in science, and then college kids interested in science. So we did it and got selected. … We’ll be airborne astronomy ambassadors.

So you’re not quite going into space, just pretty close, right?

No, it’s just a 747. We’ll go around 40,000 to 50,000 feet, around the same elevation as most commercial carriers. But with the telescope we’ll be able to see things really clearly.

What is the training process like?

I’m not exactly sure since they just let us know a few weeks ago that we were in. we got a bunch of packets in the mail, like cool packages of stuff of all the stuff we have to do. We have to take grad courses on astronomy, and that’s this semester, which is kind of crazy because that’s like, work, and I’m already taking other classes so it’s like, wow, a bigger course load. But I think the credits will actually count toward my degree, so that’s good. But that’s pretty intense. And you know, regular teleconferences, and there’s going to be some week where we have to go and do light instrument training, and then we go on an overnight flight. … We’ve got to take a week off to do the mission part of the program, and then classes this semester, and then another year to do our education plan for it.

So if you fail your classes, will they not let you fly?

Well, no, but at this point, no one is going to fail. It’s an astronomy class for educators.

What do you hope to bring back to your work at the planetarium?

The thing is focusing on what is intrinsically interesting about that experience, which is infrared astronomy. And you can learn a lot about how the universe is made up with those instruments [telescopes]. So it’s a way to talk about that and just add that personal touch like infrared astronomy is cool, airborne astronomy is cool, and I know because I did it. … We want the kids to focus on space. It has to be the science that’s cool, and just the neatness of the universe.