Three Lakeview Middle School science teachers will experience weightlessness Saturday.

Dan Wray, Roger Haeck and Mark McCollom are participating in one of Northrop Grumman's Weightless Flights of Discovery in Cleveland, Ohio. Only a select few teachers from around the country were chosen for the flights. Only about 40 were selected for Saturday's flight.

The zero gravity flights are used by NASA to train astronauts to acclimate them to weightlessness. Each parabolic arc flight lasts only about 20-30 seconds. During the flight, the astronauts experience weightlessness. Wray said there is a relatively new interest among different businesses to privatize space exploration. After much internal discussion, Northrop Grumman decided to offer the zero gravity flights. The company is sponsoring five sets of the flights around the nation with about 250 total teachers taking part. Part of the reason for the flights, Wray said, is a hope that by interesting teachers in the field, they will spark an interest in their students who then will pursue careers in the hi-tech engineering field.

The LMS teachers were invited to take part because of Wray's past experience with NASA.

"In some ways, this is an opportunity that just fell out of the sky," said Wray.

In 2003, Wray was one of 30 to 60 finalists, out of a field of more than 1,600 applicants, for the position of educator astronaut at Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA announced the educator astronaut program in January 2003, receiving more than 1,600 applications from science and math teachers across the United States. Wray submitted his application that spring.

Though Wray wasn't selected for that position, he has continued to attend NASA workshops. When Northrop Grumman was looking for teachers for the zero gravity flights, they asked NASA for a list, which NASA provided. After Wray was contacted, he discovered there were some available seats left and was able to secure seats for Haeck and McCollom.

"I believe we are the only school with three teachers so that's very nice for Lakeview, too," said McCollom.

The three LMS teachers also are the only Indiana teachers, who teach in Indiana, who are part of the Flights of Discovery.

Two weeks ago, the teachers traveled to Cleveland to prepare for the flights. During Saturday's flight, the teachers will conduct short physics experiments. As part of the preparation, the teachers were given different ideas for experiments, such as "teacher volleyball." Wray said since the flights will be less than 30 seconds long, the experiments will concentrate on physics demonstrations that show the effect of gravity, or lack of gravity. There will be about 15 to 18 parabolic arcs for the teachers to conduct their experiments.

CNN also will be on the flights for a feature story.

"I'm sure they'll let us know when they're going to air that," said McCollom.

But McCollom said he was more excited about bringing their trip back to their students and the classroom. Their students already gave the teachers ideas of experiments to conduct.

Besides the zero gravity flights, the teachers also will experience three-eights gravity, found on Mars, and one-sixth gravity, found on the moon.

Haeck said, "This is such an opportunity. I'm just amazed that we got this chance to do this. It's nice to teach with someone who has a NASA connection that we get to do these fun things." [[In-content Ad]]