Local teacher takes flight in Zero-G

Eight middle school teachers from across the U.S., including a Yadkin County woman, were recently selected to fly experiments on a parabolic flight, experiencing the weightless environment of space while operating research experiments designed and developed by their students. Each project supports a NASA research focus and provides a year-long in-class experience for students that is out of this world.

The teachers and their experiments each experienced eleven minutes of weightlessness during a series of parabolic maneuvers aboard the ZERO-G G-Force One Aircraft. The parabolic trajectory of the aircraft allows researchers to float in free-fall during the maneuvers. The results of their experiments will be used by their students and future teachers and students to understand the behavior of fluid, biological, and mechanical systems in space. The flights took place during the week of March 3 out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Betty Jo Moore, of Yadkin County, is an award-winning 6th grade science teacher at Wiley Magnet Middle School in Winston-Salem, where she does community outreach as a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador.

The Embedded Teacher program has flown ten teachers and their experiments over the past seven years, “embedding” them with researchers performing NASA and commercial space research aboard parabolic flights. The teachers bring the lessons and experiences of the program back to their classrooms to motivate students to pursue their own journeys in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics).

The program invites applications from 6-8 teachers in STEAM fields to attend a microgravity workshop to develop their own proposals for flight as part of the Embedded Teacher Project. More information on the workshop is available at spaceforteachers.org.