Graduate student has career night in Chatanika
POKER FLAT RESEARCH RANGE, NORTH OF FAIRBANKS — “Ten, nine, eight . . .”
As a woman’s voice echoed over loudspeakers on a breezy hill above the Chatanika River, Brennan Gantner pulled himself away from computer screens that assured his rocket was OK. He rushed outside to witness an event seven years in the making. His boots squeaking in the snow, Gantner put his arm around his wife, Kim Winges, with whom he had spent just three weeks in 2010, and squinted into the black Alaska night.
As the snow-covered valley flashed white and a rocket taller than a house roared skyward, a few bundled-up bystanders cheered and watched its pinprick of light disappear into the night. Then, they scurried back inside to see if the rocket would perform its task as it arced for 15 minutes over northern Alaska.
Using the rocket as a platform, Gantner was hoping to obtain an ultraviolet image of the Whirlpool Galaxy. Satellites and Earth-based telescopes have captured the galaxy in detail, but Gantner designed a device that would allow researchers to look at a different wavelength of light, one that shows the hottest areas of the galaxy where new stars form. With a successful mission, scientists would learn more about star formation and how to better measure it.
Though Gantner had plenty of help with his doctoral project, he was the one who had stayed up late for years designing the detector, the heart of an electronic telescope that would capture the 340-second image of the galaxy. He was the one who figured how to fit 175 pieces of machined metal inside a three-inch space that had to be kept under constant vacuum. And he was the one who checked his cellphone a few dozen times for messages from the two Fed Ex drivers who chauffeured his detector from Boulder, Colorado to Chatanika, Alaska in less than three days, stopping only for gas and to grab food they could eat on the move.
Gantner had enrolled at the University of Colorado because researchers there promised him the opportunity to design an instrument that used a 50-foot rocket with two military-surplus motors to escape the thickest part of the atmosphere.
“There aren’t many places that let a grad student build a rocket from scratch,” said Matt Beasley, a scientist at Colorado who was at Poker Flat to assist with the launch.
“There aren’t many people who get to do this,” Gantner agreed a week before the launch. “The downside is an incredible amount of stress. I sit up at night worrying that I’m forgetting to do something simple, like turning on the detector.”
On his big night, Gantner did not forget to flick the switch. Poker Flat, about 30 miles north of Fairbanks, was alive with lights burning at most of the outbuildings and more than 40 people working through the long Alaska night. The launch went well, as the Geophysical Institute’s staffers at Poker Flat — contracted for many years by NASA to help scientists get their work done — made rocket science seem easy.
But the $2 million experiment would not be successful, and Gantner would have no data to write up, if his detector did not get a long look at Whirlpool Galaxy. A few dozen people — including Gantner’s colleague and friend Bobby Kane, who was there “to step in and control the rocket in case I had a panic attack during flight” — looked at screens relaying the transmitted information from the rocket. A few minutes after the launch, Gantner tweaked the rocket to the correct position through radio control, and a door on the rocket slid open. Numbers on screens told Gantner his detector had seen a bright spot at the right time, but he wouldn’t know for a few days (and much computer processing) if he got what he sought.
After seeing that a flood of photons was hitting Gantner’s detector, the assembled scientists cracked a few smiles and looked like buddies celebrating a Super Bowl touchdown. Gantner patted on the back Jim Green, head Colorado researcher on the mission, who let Gantner do “98 percent of the work.” Gantner then hugged Matt Beasley, with whom he had shared many thirty-below mornings at Poker Flat and meals at the Chatanika Lodge. And then he embraced his wife, an eye surgeon in residency at the University of California Davis Medical Center. Because Gantner studies in Colorado, in recent years he spent much more time with his rocket than with his wife. They were both looking forward to a change.
“As soon as he gets in thesis-writing mode, he can come to live with me in Sacramento,” Winges said.
“I can’t wait to see what he does with all the skills he’s gained,” she said. “I’m really happy he’s going to graduate; it’s been a long time coming. And, I’m excited he’s going to shave his beard off.”
Like a hockey player entering a long run of playoff games, Gantner vowed not to shave until he had reached his goal. He smiled as someone announced the rocket’s flight was over, and the payload had parachuted to the ground about 170 miles north.
“I’m thrilled and relaxed at the same time,” he said as he stood amid his wife, his mom and dad (Cindy and Mark Gantner, from Silverton, Oregon), his sister (Mari Gantner from La Jolla, California), and his good friend Ben Brown from Madison, Wisconsin.
Except for his wife, his entourage had watched the launch from another hilltop building at Poker Flat. In a comfortable structure that includes a greenhouse-like viewing area that faces north, Cindy Gantner had stared at a grayish aurora display and remembered a detail from when her son was a baby.
“When Brennan was 3, he cut out a shape of a rocket, attached it to poster board, put stars around it and signed it,” she said. “It’s hard to believe an idea like that can lead to this.”
Brennan Gantner’s long night and his years of preparation reached their conclusion with a “debrief,” during which the researchers and staff involved with the launch gathered to discuss what happened.
“We’re very happy with what went on,” Jim Green told the crowd. “We’ve had a successful science mission.”
Despite the unanimous declaration of a job well done, Gantner had a self-conscious moment during the debrief. He sat there with a shy smile as everyone in the room suddenly turned to him and sang “Happy Birthday.” There, in the early morning hours of a late January day in Chatanika, Alaska, Brennan Gantner turned 34, closing one memorable period of his professional life and opening another.
