Dr. Steven Collicott

Steven Collicott is a professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Indiana’s own Purdue University since 1991.  At Purdue he teaches and does research in zero-gravity flight experiments and computer modeling of zero-gravity control of liquids and gasses.  One example of this modeling work is helping to determine how much rocket fuel remains in the fuel tank of a satellite 23,000miles up and that was launched 15 years ago.  Since 1996 he has helped Purdue aerospace engineering student fly experiments in weightlessness, or zero-gravity, in parabolas, a special type of aircraft flight, that gives us zero-gravity 25 seconds at a time.  In 2006 NASA launched an experiment he designed to the International Space Station and then he helped, from the ground, the astronauts operate the experiment in orbit.  Recently he has started flying experiments on Blue Origin’s sub-orbital New Shepard rocket and in December he was selected by NASA as the first professor to fly with an experiment to space and back in the sub-orbital Virgin Galactic rocket.