Lying on the padded floor of a modified Boeing 727, Greenbelter Denna Lambert began to float as the plane crested the apex of its parabola and the effects of gravity receded.
Lambert said she was always a “fangirl” when it came to spaceflight, from the time she was growing up in Little Rock, Ark., and science fiction films showed her more inclusive and cooperative worlds.
“Oh my goodness, what if we could get to that place – where everyone is treated equitably?” Lambert remembers thinking. “It didn’t matter how you looked or where you came from or whatever. You’re set on this common mission.”
Lambert participated in the parabolic flight mission Thursday, December 15, in Houston, pursuing her vision of spaceflight as a way to build a more inclusive world, in space and on Earth. The flight, which created conditions of microgravity, demonstrated technologies and techniques to support people with disabilities when they go to space. Lambert, who is blind, joined a group of 16 flyers with diverse disabilities on the second weightless flight run by AstroAccess, a project of the nonprofit SciAccess, which advances disability inclusion in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). No astronaut with a known disability has flown in space to date.
Lambert, who is Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion lead for NASA’s Early Stage Innovation & Partnerships (ESIP) portfolio in Washington, D.C., tested tactile graphics and personalized hearing technology on the flight. But she said the flight’s most important result was contributing to the body of knowledge on weightless flight with a crew including people with disabilities.
“If we do it once, that’s cool,” she said. “But if we do it twice, with a larger crew, with even a wider range of disabilities, then it’s like, ‘Okay, now we’ve got replicability.’”
Sheri Wells-Jensen, a member of AstroAccess’s organizing team, an associate professor of linguistics at Bowling Green State University and leader of the blind crew on the flight, said, “Disabled people drink a lot of Kool Aid about what we can and can’t do.”
AstroAccess missions remind crew members not to drink that Kool Aid. “All day long you’re hearing, ‘Please sit down, and I’ll get that for you, honey,’ instead of, ‘Come over here. I need you,’” Wells-Jensen said. “And those messages are really different.”
Flight day started unremarkably enough, with flyers passing through the Transportation Security Administration before their early morning departure from Houston. But once the plane reached an altitude of 25,000 feet, the plan for the flight was precise choreography. Flyers lie down on the floor of the plane’s 60-foot “floating area,” which is covered in squishy material like wrestling mats in a high school gym, said Wells-Jensen.
Then the plane arced into repeated parabolic motion, ascending 18 steep hills and navigating 18 sharp descents. Twenty parabolas were planned, Lambert said, but the plane ran out of airspace in the 100-square-mile box allotted by the Federal Aviation Administration.
During the ascents, flyers experience gravitational forces that make them feel almost twice their weight on Earth. Then, when the plane noses over the top of its hill of atmosphere, flyers slowly, gently lift off the floor. From the peak of each parabola to its valley, crew members had 20 to 30 seconds to conduct their experiments.
Anna Voelker, AstroAccess co-founder and executive director, who participated in the first AstroAccess flight, said the tactile graphics and personalized hearing technology that Lambert helped test are both examples of universal design – the principle that systems designed for diverse groups of users are better for all users.
“By creating access for those who have been historically excluded, that really just benefits science and discovery itself,” they said.
Lambert said the tactile graphics were overwhelmingly successful. In an environment lacking tactile stimuli, hand-sized panels with raised lines and markings mounted on the plane walls relayed messages to help low-vision and blind flyers orient themselves. But these graphics could also benefit sighted flyers in the event of a smoky fire or power outage on future voyages.
Blind and sighted AstroAccess flyers underwent training to read these tactile graphics with a swipe of their hands, Voelker said. To test whether flyers could “read” the graphics, the graphics lied. If flyers could see or use environmental cues to orient themselves without the graphics, they had to be able to interpret the graphics correctly to reproduce the lie.
“So where it says the front of the cabin is, where the back of the cabin is and which wall you’re on, none of that is necessarily true,” said Voelker. “The only thing that’s always true is down.”
Lambert was also one of six flyers who participated in a seatbelt docking test, successfully fastening and unfastening a five-point seat harness in microgravity within 15 seconds – currently a required capability to fly in space.
Lambert added that SonicCloud audio-assist software, which allows users to adjust sound to their individual hearing needs, enabled her to better hear flight instructions through her headphones.
The rise of commercial spaceflight may help democratize space travel. “Because we’re at the very beginning of spaceflight becoming more available to not just government agencies,” Lambert said, “the whole point is to make sure that all of the human experience is included from the very beginning.”
The European Space Agency announced in November the selection of its first astronaut with a disability, John McFall, whose leg was amputated after a motorcycle accident. NASA has not announced plans to send an astronaut with a disability to space.
But ESIP Director Jenn Gustetic said Lambert’s work will play a crucial part in furthering equity and inclusion at NASA. Since joining ESIP a year ago, Lambert has been building a multi-year strategy and a team to engage diverse space technology proposals across ESIP’s programs. “Our hypothesis is that by embedding this capability within our organization,” said Gustetic, “it will result in more sustainable and impactful and program-customized solutions to this work.”
Lambert said that in the week of rehearsals before the flight, NASA astronauts and physicians, as well as representatives from the space tourism companies Blue Origin, Sierra Space and Virgin Galactic, showed up to pitch in with errands and to observe.
“I think they genuinely want to see, ‘How can we make this work?’” Lambert said.
She said she feels lucky to have pursued a lifelong interest through AstroAccess. But, she said, “I don’t want to be seen as this awe-inspiring person. If we only see people with disabilities being just inspiring, then it takes us out of being just regular folks with regular interests.”
Lambert said the flight combined the focus and seriousness of scientific experimentation with the childlike joy of flipping and spinning in microgravity. Lambert’s son, seeing photos of his mom floating during the flight, said he wanted to float too.
Lambert, whom Wells-Jensen described as “good at learning new things fast” and “an exquisite team player,” said the desires and experiences of individuals with disabilities reflect a full spectrum: “We should be expected to engage in all aspects of what humans want to do, from the normal to the crazy.”