Maryland Graduate Prepares for Next Shuttle Mission
Newswise — Teacher, scientist, world traveler, aquanaut, astronaut, Terp. NASA Mission Specialist Richard Arnold II has just about done it all on this earth. Later this month, he'll extend his experiences to another world... traveling to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Shuttle Discovery.
During the 14 day journey of NASA's STS-119 mission, Arnold will take three of a scheduled four space walks to install the fourth and final set of solar array wings and a truss element for the ISS. Once installed, the extra power from the panels will allow the ISS crew size to increase to six following the installation of a Japanese research module scheduled for next May.
Arnold - an educator and scientist - was born in Cheverly, Maryland and raised in Bowie. In his preflight interview with NASA, Arnold says one of the people he admired most while growing up was Jacques Cousteau - so much so that he ended up studying marine science. "... I ended up in graduate school at the University of Maryland. They have an environmental science center over on the eastern shore, the (Horn Point Laboratory), and I got in with a really good group of scientists there on my advisory committee who also really encouraged me to try some different things in the field when I finished."
(Horn Point Lab is part of the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) - a member of the University System of Maryland. Arnold graduated from UMCES's Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences (MEES) Graduate Program. His actual degree was issued by the University of Maryland, College Park.)
UMCES Professor Bill Dennison was Arnold's adviser during his graduate studies and will be traveling to Florida to see the launch. "Ricky was a fun, dedicated and interesting student who dove into the Chesapeake Bay both literally and intellectually. I am not surprised that he has been selected to be one of the few individuals to conduct missions to space. His competence and engaging personality were evident during his graduate work as a MEES student."
Following graduation, Arnold taught math and science in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Romania. Then - in 2004 - he became an astronaut - and an aquanaut.
After completing his NASA training, he served as a mission specialist on a joint NASA-NOAA underwater mission - NASA Extreme Environment Mission Objectives project or NEEMO for short - on Aquarius - the world's only undersea laboratory. The 10 day mission actually simulated a lunar outpost. Now he's going on one of the final missions aimed at completing the International Space Station.
But for Arnold the educator, this space shuttle mission is an opportunity to inspire young people - to let them know they can be part of the future in space - going to the moon and Mars if they work hard enough. He told the NASA interviewer, "This is going to be a journey that is made one day and, there's going to be people all over the world making it happen. So they just need to be thinking about, 'What part do I want to play?' It's not just a handful of people doing it. It's thousands of people everywhere."
STS-119 Website: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts119/index.html
MEES - Marine, Estuarine and Environmental Science Graduate Program at the University of Maryland: http://www.mees.umd.edu/index.html
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