There was a time Erik Axdahl was only as close to space as “Star Trek” could take him. Today he is working at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia as a Georgia Tech graduate student. Over the course of the next two years he will be working to develop a system that will some day land a piece of equipment the size of a two-story building on Mars. This project isn’t a science fiction story line, but rather reality of a few dreams and a lot of hard work coming together in a scientific education.

     “Mole Day,” a day celebrating chemistry in high school Axdahl proudly sang “They Call Me a Chemistry Nerd.” But being a self-proclaimed nerd didn’t keep him from a nomination for Homecoming King and the presidencies of the band, theatre department, and Association (a popular school social committee), as well as a number of other admired positions. Throughout his high school years he did all he could to cure his self-proclaimed “explorer bug.” He took all but one of the science classes offered. His teachers inspired him to continue with his studies. He believes that “a horrible experience in high school quite plausibly would have affected my current path.”

     When he arrived at the University of Minnesota he saw his passions explode and begin to develop into an out-of-this-world career field. He had the opportunity to work with one of his professors on a project for the United States military. Their work focused on the use of cavitation, the tiny bubbles produced when things, such as a propeller, move through the water. By creating supercavitation they were able to encapsulate an underwater torpedo in a large bubble of air. This allowed the torpedo to move through the water ten times faster than it would have without this technology. Axdahl admits that he had some moral issues to consider when working on weapons that could be used in war. But, he says that the work of an engineer is never solely for government or private applications and that technology always flows into the public sector.

      How will Axdahl’s graduate work, landing something the size of a two-story building on Mars, possibly impact our daily lives? Axdahl offered a long list of things developed by NASA that now are important parts of our lives-- and it’s more than just Tang. Several years ago the Hubble Telescope was having problems with its mirrors. Some Americans were very angry their tax-dollars were spent on a piece of equipment that ended up not doing its job. The algorithmic solution though was more useful than just its Hubble application Axdahl explains. It not only solved the space station errors but also gave us new technology to be used in monitoring breast cancer. For the Global Positioning System (GPS) system in your car and on your cell phone, you can thank NASA as well. Axdahl says, science isn’t always people’s priority but “if the space program wasn’t there, people would notice.”

     Soon we will be able to thank Axdahl for his impact. In 2006 he was an intern at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. He worked designing an unmanned aerial vehicle able to fly in formation, sensing the motions of the other aircraft. These vehicles will not only fly without a pilot in the sky, but also without controls on the ground. While the project continues, Axdahl contributed to something that might one day take to the sky.

     What is exciting to Axdahl is the possibility a project he is working on or has worked on will some day go up into the sky and maybe even land somewhere. After graduating from the University of Minnesota, he spent his second summer interning for NASA. He worked as the computer programmer in a group of students trying to send a device the size of a Mini Cooper to Mars by 2016. In his coming years, as a student of Georgia Tech studying again at Langley, Axdahl will try to put more than just machines on Mars. The astronauts he is working for are now of kindergarten age; so he has time to fit in his PhD before they are ready for launch.

     It’s been a long road getting from Star Trek to NASA. But Axdahl has followed his explorer bug and landed in field primed for further expansion. Science, to him, is a way of questioning and a way of understanding. Through his years of study he found science helped him comprehend of the workings of the universe. He describes this enlightenment as a whole new level of beauty. Axdahl said that the sciences “draw back a curtain on the wonder, complexity, and elegance of creation.”