CAMPUS FEATURE
PURSUIT OF SPACE FROM HI-SEAS TO NASA AND BEYOND
Eagles Run Away with Track and Field Honors After capturing the Peach Belt Conference’s inaugural indoor championship title in February, the Embry-Riddle women’s Track and Field team continued its 2024 dominance at the Peach Belt Conference Outdoor competition in April, winning 13 individual titles on the way to the team’s sixth straight outdoor conference crown. In May, the Eagle Track & Field squad sent three athletes to the 2024 NCAA II Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Emporia State University in Kansas: Mikaela Miles (’27) in the Triple Jump, Kirsten Rolle (’26) in the Hammer Throw and Brooklynn Gould (’25) in the Heptathlon. The team celebrated two All-American performances on the second day of the NCAA championships as Miles and Gould earned top-10 finishes in their respective events. The following Eagles also earned 2024 All-Region honors from the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association: Hailey Bruce (’27), Javelin; Mackenzie Keller (’27), 1,500m; Maxime Kirschner (’24), Javelin; Madison Morris (’25), Discus; and Taylor Roth (’27), 800m.
ORION MULTI-PURPOSE CREW VEHICLE
Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.
NUMBER OF CREW
MISSION DURATION Up to 21 days
4
FULL STACK HEIGHT
GROSS LIFTOFF MASS
67 ft
78,000 lbs
Jonathon Guthmiller’s (’23) space journey began in 2014, witnessing the first-ever Orion spacecraft launch at Cape Canaveral. His fascination with the space industry resulted in him pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Space Operations at Embry-Riddle, where he also became involved in research at the Advanced Space Technologies Research Applications Lab (A.S.T.R.A. Lab) on the Daytona Beach Campus. Guthmiller was selected to partake in an analog astronaut experience during a two-week mission on top of Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano on Earth, in Hawaii with the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, or HI-SEAS. During this immersive experience, Guthmiller and five other participants explored various challenges pertaining to lunar missions, including the study of lava tubes and the impact of crew isolation.
“We have zero experience going inside of lava tubes on the moon since it’s so far away,” he explained. “We were using the analog environment in Hawaii as a simulated lunar lava tube because they both have lava environments and features called permanently shadowed regions.” Guthmiller’s trajectory took its next leap as he secured a position at NASA’s Johnson Space Center as an International Space Station flight control planner. He maintains a steadfast focus on his goal: becoming an astronaut — a career path that he plans to apply for at age 31 through hard work, experience and industry passion. “A long-term goal of mine would definitely be to explore my career at NASA and stay at NASA for my whole life … I think you definitely just have to keep telling yourself you can do it because, at the end of the day, you have to work hard for what you want.”
FUN FACT
At the Peach Belt Conference Outdoor competition, the Eagles dominated the field and tallied 353.5 points, while their closest competitor managed just 109 points.
21 | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
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