From the time NASA chief technologist David Miller was kept home from a Hampton elementary school to watch Gemini and Apollo space missions with his mother, she had determined he would shoot for the moon even if she had to launch him there herself.
Once Mr. Miller was deep into advanced high school science and math classes at Shady Side Academy, his mom decided travel beyond the first levels of the atmosphere was needed if he would ever break the exosphere. “When I turned 16, she told me it’s time I learned to fly. Unfortunately, that evening my dad told me it’s time to pay for it, so that sort of stalled that for a while,” laughed Mr. Miller.
After learning to fly as an undergraduate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Miller has logged enough sky time to expertly land a four-seater safely at Allegheny County Airport — but he has yet to crack the barrier into space.
On the other hand, putting nearly a dozen innovations such as the Synchronized Position, Hold, Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) project into space has allowed him to see some of his greatest works help propel NASA to the farthest edges of the universe.
More than enough to make Mom proud.
“Working in a university setting and being able to see your hardware fly and become a national asset is an extraordinary feeling,” he said.
This week’s voyage home was a mix of work and play for the Allison Park native. With a packed schedule of tours of Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh set for Friday, Mr. Miller jumped at the chance to serve as a presenting judge for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which kicked off Wednesday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
While his duties at the fair mostly consisted of handing off awards to teams with innovations deemed the most NASA-friendly, the tough job comes when he has to choose which emerging technologies coming out of Pitt or CMU can be used for space exploration.
As a professor in the aeronautics and astronautics department at MIT — a position that put Mr. Miller in with NASA through an intergovernmental agreement — the idea of game-changing technologies coming out of classrooms is nothing new. Finding those technologies in Pittsburgh became a new priority last year, when NASA gave grants of more than $2.99 million to CMU and $689,308 to Pitt for work that supports space exploration.
With Carnegie Mellon known for innovations and research surrounding robotics, rocket engineering, planetary rovers and other technologies, Mr. Miller said he’s excited to get a firsthand glimpse at work he’s heard touted over the years. At Pitt, which announced last year that technology created by chemistry professor Sanford Asher will be used on NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, Mr. Miller will check out innovations ranging from a sonic flashlight to research on degradation of materials in low-oxygen environments.
Most importantly for students and faculty, said David Vorp, associate dean for research in the Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, Mr. Miller will talk about what it takes to get a job or to forge a collaboration with NASA.
“It’s every bit as valuable as presenting our technology. As we talk about what we can do for him, we can also talk about what he can do for us,” Mr. Vorp said.
Research and innovations not directly related to space travel — such as those related to health care and remote health monitoring — can do a lot more than one might think for NASA. Conversely, technologies created with space in mind often have better applications on Earth.
Mr. Miller noted that high-resolution cameras installed in smartphones are built on technology designed for space satellite imaging. Another technology created by NASA and the Department of Homeland Security to detect faint sounds and signals in space was recently used to detect the heartbeats of survivors buried in rubble following the earthquakes in Nepal.
He said anyone can help further NASA’s cause by participating in events such as the Asteroid Grand Challenge, which tasks the public with analyzing data surrounding asteroids and to imagine asteroids as welcome centers for interstellar travelers.
Mr. Miller may never fulfill his dream of entering space, but when there are innovations such as the James Webb Space Telescope designed to travel “back to the first light,” he said one doesn’t need to physically leave the planet to ponder the universe.
“I have a little app on my phone that reminds me when a new planet has been discovered in the Milky Way galaxy, and it bugs the heck out of me. There’s, like, three [planets] a day that we’re finding. It tells you that about every star you look at in the night sky has an average of one small planet …,” he said.
“You think, that means there are billions of planets that are sort of Earth size, and then you start working those numbers. What if some of those have nice atmospheres and oceans? What if some of those have intelligent life? That would only leave a billion possibilities, right?
“It makes you wonder. This is why I stand outside the NASA front door each morning, staring up at the sky.”
Deborah M. Todd: dtodd@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1652. Twitter: @deborahtodd.
First Published: May 14, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
