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Shuttle’s final flight contains cargo created by Canfield grad
Canfield
A Canfield family’s Fourth of July tradition helped to shape the cargo scheduled to lift off Friday with space shuttle Atlantis.
As a youth, Brian Roberts used to spend Independence Day in his backyard with his mother and father, Joanne and Thomas, and brothers, Thomas and Keith, launching rockets instead of fireworks.
Now, at 41, he is the robotics demonstrations and test manager at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. His team helped create the Robotic Refuel Mission module that will be tested on the International Space Station. It will allow satellites to be refueled or repaired from Earth.
Roberts said preparing for a 4-H model rocket launch as a kid was the first activity that piqued his interest in space. Later, a high school essay assignment and a handy Time magazine article about the Challenger shuttle accident introduced him to the intricacies of space travel.
Canfield Superintendent Dante Zambrini, who was Roberts’ English teacher in high school, remembered his former student as an extraordinary young man.
“He is in the top five of students I have worked with in 35 years,” said Zambrini. “I knew anyone who hired him was going to get a top-notch employee.”
Zambrini said he recalled going to Cleveland for a scholarship application interview that awarded Roberts with $20,000 toward his higher education, based upon his extracurricular activities during high school.
Roberts graduated from Canfield High School as valedictorian in 1988. He earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering at Case Western Reserve University and went on to get his master’s degree at the University of Maryland. It was during his time at the Maryland university that Roberts created a ratchetless space wrench for astronauts that was tested during John Glenn’s 1998 flight aboard the shuttle Discovery.
His latest experiment is a washing machine-sized box that will house tools on its front face and a satellite fitting on the others. Once it is deployed in space, controllers in Houston will instruct a robot on the International Space Station to grab tools and make mock repairs.
Roberts said over the next two years, he and his team will work with controllers to see if the invention is successful.
“If we can prove the technology is feasible, it will save money,” said Roberts.
Roberts said the cost of launching satellites is expensive, in part, because of the weight of fuel. This tool would allow satellites to fuel in space, as well as be repaired rather than replaced.
The Atlantis launch will be the final flight under NASA’s shuttle program. Future flights to the space station will be on Russian shuttles.
Roberts lives in Maryland with his wife, Nicole, and daughter, Michaela, and is awaiting the birth of his second child.