AUSTIN, Texas—Burke O. Fort of the Texas Space Grant Consortium at The University of Texas at Austin will receive NASA’s highest civilian honor in ceremonies at 3 p.m. Monday (March 6) at the Johnson Space Center’s Teague Auditorium in Houston.
Fort has been awarded the NASA Public Service Medal for conceiving and implementing the highly acclaimed NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunity Program. The program has enabled hundreds of young people to experience firsthand the excitement of the space program. Over the past six years, some 384 students from 96 universities have actually experienced weightlessness by flying in a KC 135 aircraft at the Johnson Space Center.
This program is administered by the Texas Space Grant Consortium (TSGC), which is a part of the National Space Grant and Fellowship Program. TSGC is located at the University of Texas at Austin Center for Space Research and UT Austin is a member. Fort conceived of the idea of flying college students in the NASA Reduced-Gravity aircraft in 1994. The idea was implemented in 1995 by the NASA Johnson Space Center and NASA Headquarters through the Texas Space Grant Consortium.
For more information, contact Mark Fischer at the Center for Space Research (512) 471-8574.
