Michael Whidden, right, graduate student in computer science, talks with NASA astronaut and Cornell alumnus Daniel Barry after his Oct. 7 lecture in Phillips Hall. Denise Weldon/University Photography
Cornell alumnus Daniel Barry, a 1975 graduate in engineering, returned to campus Oct. 7 to recount the adventures of what he thought of as "six guys on a camping trip" -- a trip on the space shuttle that took him 3.7 million miles into outer space.
In Phillips Hall auditorium, Barry spoke to more than 100 engineering students and some of his former professors about his role as Mission Specialist 4 on NASA's 1996 STS-72 flight.
"When I left Cornell, I always hoped I would come back to give a colloquium in this room that I spent so much time in, and I hoped that it would be about flying into space," he told his audience.
Barry said it had been one of his lifetime dreams to be an astronaut, and originally he had planned to join the Air Force. But he was encouraged by a member of the NASA program to study engineering instead.
"I wrote a letter to one of the astronauts to ask him what he thought of my plan and he said that soon NASA would be taking five scientists for every two pilots into space," Barry said. While working towards his bachelor's degree at Cornell, a master's degree at Princeton and a doctorate at the University of Miami, he applied to the space program and 14 years later, he was accepted to fly aboard the space shuttle Endeavour.
The flight, a cooperative effort between NASA and the Japanese Space Agency, lasted nine days as the crew retrieved a Japanese satellite from its orbit. Barry also left the ship for a six and a half-hour space walk to test equipment that will be used in the construction of the International Space Station.
"The tools we used really aren't that different from the tools you use in your garage, except [while you're weightless] you have to learn how to use them so you turn the screw and the screw doesn't turn you," he said.
Barry also said people have asked if he saw evidence of alien life when he was on his space walk.
"I started flashing my helmet lights but no one came to pick me up," he said.
After presenting a video of his trip, Barry opened the floor to questions. One of the concerns from the audience was the amount of pollution Barry observed as he orbited the Earth.
" We saw tremendous amounts of burning forests, mostly over South America moving into the Pacific Ocean and dust from dust storms in Africa moving into the Atlantic," he said. "In the 1960s, the Gemini missions were trying to get pictures of the dust storms, but they had a hard time seeing it from space. Now it is so bad it was hard to see through them."