A University researcher is traveling “down under” to launch a program that could propel its students into the space industry.

UNC Research Associate Professor Scott Madry’s Chapel Hill-based space consulting company, Informatics International Inc., received a contract to create a curriculum for the International Space University (ISU).

The program will be located at the University of South Australia in Adelaide.

South Australia and ISU worked together to win a $450,000 grant from the Australian Space Program.

“I’m looking forward to it, but it’s going to be a long flight,” said Madry, who works in the anthropology department studying spatial analysis, geographic information systems and Old World prehistory.

“They say that if you go any further, then you’re almost back home.”

ISU, based in Strasbourg, France, is designed for students who need a crash course in space science as well as law and policy.

“We call it aerodynamics for poets,” Madry said. “If you studied astrophysics, you’ll be bored by our astrophysics courses.”

The program, he said, is formatted for students from diverse backgrounds seeking to break into the aerospace industry.

“Our core purpose is to bring together capable professionals and graduate students, who are the future’s space leaders, and teach them how to network and work together,” said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

“ISU was created by three young men in my office in 1988,” Logsdon said, “and it has since seen thousands of students, the majority of whom have entered the space field.”

ISU’s programs are currently available only during the northern hemisphere’s summer months. Though based in Strasbourg, the program rotates through different universities worldwide.

The Adelaide location will be the first ISU program offered in the southern hemisphere.

“The problem is that their seasons are inverted, so they are in school while we offer courses during our summer break,” Madry said.

Madry said the first five-week course will be offered during January and February 2011, when students in Australia are on summer vacation.

He said the program’s brevity doesn’t imply easiness, however.

“Our unofficial motto is sleep on the plane home,” Madry said.

The program will stay in Adelaide for its first three years before moving around the southern hemisphere.

“We focus on the three I’s: interdisciplinary, international and intercultural education,” said Jeffrey Hoffman, former astronaut and professor of aerospace engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Hoffman has served as a chairman and lecturer for the ISU since 1994 and said the program has come a long way.

“It’s remarkable to see Westerners interacting with Orientals, who have different methods to reach consensus and expectations of how things should operate,” Hoffman said.

Madry also stressed the importance of developing an international space community in addition to the scientific instruction.

ISU’s latest graduating class had 122 students from 31 countries.

“What we want is for people not to wonder why working with Russians is so hard,” Madry said, “but to be able to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey Yvgeny, why aren’t you launching our satellite?’”

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