COLUMBIA, S.C. — Earlier this month, Columbia woman Centra Mazyck told us how she's helping to make space exploration accessible for all. She was gearing up for a zero-gravity flight with fellow disability rights ambassadors for space research.
Now, she’s taken the flight and is back from her mission.
“I was ready for it. I'm like, ‘Come on, let's take me to space," Mazyck said when talking about gearing up for her flight.
She was eager and excited to finally see what zero gravity felt like. She and a team of 11 others were chosen to take the ZERO-G flight thanks to AstroAccess.
“We have many disabled individuals that have been applying to NASA that have been interested in space. So, this company AstroAccess is the first that sponsored, and believed in disabled individuals in space,” explained Mazyck.
Before getting people with disabilities into orbit, AstroAccess is starting its research by using parabolic flights.
The research allows them to see how they need to adjust aircraft for people with varying disabilities and how they can perform tasks while floating.
Mazyck was finally geared up, prepped, and ready to go, and her team boarded the aircraft and took flight on Oct. 17.
“I was just light as a feather, floating, and I wish we had more time, just to experience the weightlessness," she said.
They experienced zero gravity 15 times, for about two to three minutes each time during the flight.
Mazyck explained that “every set of ambassadors had a certain number of tasks they had to perform" while floating.
She did some exercises to see how well she could control her body, and legs, without gravity.
"Then after that, we just had fun," she said.
When Mazyck and her team lifted off, it was one small step for them, but one giant leap for people with disabilities.
“We have blind individuals, deaf individuals, mobility individuals and we completed that mission, like no other," Mazyck said with pride. "This is going to go down in history."
Mazyck hopes that one day, she'll get to actually go to space.
“The next step, is for them to continue to take parabolic flights, and also to retrofit the aircraft for the disabilities, and also our ultimate goal is to go to space with a disabled individual to make space accessible for all because we needed to be included,” she added.
The flight was not only for space research, but to promote inclusivity in STEM organizations like NASA.