Astronaut on Campus: Douglas H. Wheelock Speaking on April 6

Retired Col. Douglas H. Wheelock, a NASA astronaut, will be speaking in the Moskovitz Theater on April 6 from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. 

This event is free and open to the public. Please note, the event is following NASA’s COVID protocols, so masking is required and space is limited. Updates to this policy will be communicated to registered attendees by e-mail.

Wheelock, who accumulated more than 178 days in space, flew on STS-120 in 2007. In 2010, he served as a flight engineer for Expedition 24 and commander for Expedition 25 during which he conducted three unplanned spacewalks to replace a faulty ammonia pump module.  The New York native holds a bachelor’s in applied science and engineering from the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and a master’s in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. He has earned a very lengthy list of awards including a Bronze Star and the NASA Superior Accomplishment Award.

The event is sponsored by The Mugas Amateur Radio Club, organized in 1975 in the spirit of Father Josef Murgas who pioneered the very first overland wireless voice transmission in 1905 between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton; W3USR, the University of Scranton Amateur Radio Club; and the University’s Department of Physics and Engineering.

The University is the lead institution for the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) project, an international citizen-science project that brings together professional scientists and amateur radio operators for mutual benefit, and has been awarded over $2.5 million in National Science Foundation and NASA Funding since 2019 for HamSCI and Space Science-related projects. The project, led by Scranton physics and electrical engineering professor Nathaniel Frissell, Ph.D., is an officially recognized NASA Citizen Science project. Frissell, a NASA grant recipient, recently published findings of traveling ionospheric disturbances in the upper atmosphere for the first time, demonstrating the effects of waves on radio communications

For further information, click here and to register click here.