Highlights

• Sierra Space, a Colorado-based private aerospace and space technologies company, turned to UCF's College of Medicine for its expertise in aerospace medicine with the donation of its cargo module, once housed at Kennedy Space Center.

• The rare piece of technology will become a major asset for UCF's emerging aerospace medicine program, which is exploring how space flight impacts the human body and how that knowledge can drive innovation into diagnostics, treatment and disease prevention for patients on Earth.

• UCF will use the module to give students and faculty precise training to address medical events in the confines of a spacecraft and will also enable researchers to create technologies for improving payloads and establishing protocols to send materials into the tight spaces of intergalactic travel.

Landing humans on the moon was just a dream when UCF was founded in 1963. But we dared to believe - developing the talent and inventing the technologies to make it reality. That same spirit still drives us today.

We are America's Space University. And we celebrate UCF Space Week to honor our origin as we dare to build what's next.

A space capsule is becoming the UCF College of Medicine's newest classroom and research lab.

Sierra Space, a Colorado-based private aerospace and space technologies company, donated the 22-foot-long life-sized model of their Shooting Star cargo module, which delivers supplies and equipment to the International Space Station.

The model of the Sierra Space Shooting Star cargo module will soon be a unique, interactive classroom and research facility at the UCF College of Medicine. (Photo by Eddy Duryea '13 )

The gift recognizes UCF's reputation as America's Space University and the medical school's emerging aerospace medicine program, which is exploring how space flight impacts the human body and how that knowledge can drive innovation into diagnostics, treatment and disease prevention for patients on Earth.

The model was housed at Kennedy Space Center - located roughly 30 miles from UCF's campus - where it was used as a design reference for engineers and a training tool for in-space cargo transfer. The module attaches to a Sierra Space Dream Chaser commercial spaceplane to deliver up to 12,000 pounds of cargo, including science experiments, research equipment and medical supplies to space stations.

The mockup is almost identical to a real module with a hatch that docks with the spacecraft and a section of storage lockers that hold resupply materials.

"There's only a handful of ships that can take payloads to low Earth orbit," says Emmanuel Urquieta, the College of Medicine's vice chair for aerospace medicine and director of UCF's new Center for Aerospace and Extreme Environments Medicine (CASEEM). "This module is a true-to-size mock-up that is fully aligned with what actually flies into space."

The module is almost identical to what actually flies in space and will allow UCF students and faculty to better understand the logistics and practicalities of maintaining the health of space travelers. (Photo courtesy of Sierra Space)

Dedicated to Keeping Space Travelers Healthy

CASEEM is a multidisciplinary center that includes UCF faculty experts in medicine, engineering, computer science, psychology, arts and educational leadership who will work together to research and develop new technologies for keeping space travelers healthy as well as soldiers on military missions, deep sea explorers and mountain climbers.

UCF will use the module to give students and faculty precise training to address medical events in the confines of a spacecraft.

The model also will help researchers create technologies for improving payloads and establishing protocols to send materials into the tight spaces of intergalactic travel. Such technologies and strategies also could be used in combat zones, on submarines and in remote and isolated areas of Earth, Urquieta says.

"It is a rare piece of technology that the UCF Aerospace Medicine program is privileged to use for research." - Ed Powers, CASEEM's medical director

"This module brings human spaceflight to life for students and researchers at UCF," says William (Ed) Powers, CASEEM's medical director, who worked as director of flight medicine for Axiom Space and chief of NASA's Medical Operations Branch before joining UCF. "It is a rare piece of technology that the UCF Aerospace Medicine program is privileged to use for research."

The university is working to create a location for the module.

The donated module grew out of a longstanding professional relationship between aerospace medicine faculty members with Tom Marshburn, chief astronaut and vice president of programs at Sierra Space. Marshburn spent 28 years at NASA, where he was on three space flights and served as medical operations lead for the International Space Station.

"Sierra Space is proud to support the UCF's College of Medicine and its aerospace medicine program by providing our life-size mockup of our Dream Chaser cargo module," Marshburn says. "Humans will interface with the actual Dream Chaser spaceplane and its cargo module when it arrives at the ISS or a commercial LEO destination, and we look forward to working with UCF medical students, physicians and faculty on the insights the mockup vehicle can provide for human factors studies, in aerospace and mechanical engineering, and in potential space medical capabilities."

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