FLIGHT DAY!!!!

A big congratulations to the 11 people who had faith in me, you were right because I DIDN'T PUKE!!!!

After another night of not getting much sleep and more toast for breakfast, we left for Ellington Field this morning with high hopes of getting to fly.  We went through morning meetings and briefings, but were more hopeful because the flight meds were already sitting out waiting for us.  Our flight doc gave us the run-down on the medication and suggested that we get the injection instead of the pill because there seemed to be fewer side effects with the injection.  Once we all got our shot, we walked out of our briefing room and out onto the flight area.  All the team members staying on the ground were taking pictures of us and wishing us luck.  By that point, I was so giddy I thought I was going to explode!  All the people flying got into a line and boarded the plane while the photographers and videographers recorded us.

A short while later, we took off and flew towards our air space.  Once we got there, the pilot leveled off and gave us about 10 minutes to set up our cameras on mounts, check our experiments, and make sure we were ready to go.  We started our parabolas going up, so we had close to 2 Gs against us.  I tried lifting my arms up towards to ceiling, but it felt like I was trying to lift weights.  You could hear the plane get quieter as we were starting the arc that lead to our first microgravity free fall, and just knowing what was about to happen next was so exciting.

Since it is still so fresh, I can't find any words that could help me accurately describe the sensation I felt when I started floating around in the cabin.  I remember my eyes getting huge, having a big smile on my face, and not knowing whether I should scream or laugh.  It was so amazing and awesome.  We had the first two parabolas to get acclimated to what was happening before we started our research.  But even when we were doing our research, we were having a blast.  Our goal was to change positions in our experiment so we could all do each of the jobs, but it was difficult to find a good time to do that.  So instead, we just stayed at our jobs and did them for the majority of the time.  I was timekeeper, so my main job was to start the stopwatch when we started the oscillations, then call the countdown when our time was almost up.  Since I didn't have to pay as close attention to the samples, I tended to float a little higher over the experiment so I could get a bird's eye view of things.  We also had some time to do our outreach experiments.  Oddly enough, my hovercraft didn't do too much.  Due to the air the balloon let out and the way I let go of it, my hovercraft just kind of floated there with me.

Overall, we had 32 parabolas in microgravity, 4 in lunar, and 4 in Martian gravity.  With the lunar and Martian gravity, we had a different type of fun because instead of floating, we would still come back to the floor of the plane.  We walked like astronauts and did all sorts of bouncing and turns...I felt like I was back in gymnastics and cheerleading playing on the springboard.  Once our parabolas were over, we packed up loose parts of our experiments and went back to our seats at the back of the plane.  We landed back at Ellington Field, and all the team members who didn't fly were waiting there for us with signs and big smiles for us.  We took a group picture, had a quick briefing, then got to talk to our team members about our flight.  Since we didn't have to do anything to our experiment other than switch out the glove boxes, we had much more spare time than the other teams. 

When it was time for the other teams to go to their briefing, we decided to stay in the room next door so we could stay in the air conditioning.  A few minutes later, our 2 girls who were going to fly in the afternoon came back and told us there was more bad weather and they would have to wait until tomorrow morning for their flight.

I haven't been able to download any of our pictures or videos that we took from our flight, but once I do I will put them on here so you can see what I got to experience today.

Wednesday...the ALMOST flight day

So here's the story of how yesterday went:

We had been briefed before about what not to eat/drink leading up to your flight...nothing acidic, no spicy foods, AND NO CARBONATED DRINKS!  That meant no coke!  My last coke was in the morning of the Monday we got here, and at this point in time, I still haven't had one!  Another requirement was to get a good night's sleep because our flight meds would make us drowsy.  Of course, even though I wanted to go to bed early Tuesday night, I couldn't because I was so anxious about Wednesday's flight.

I got up Wednesday morning and the first thing I did was put on my flight suit. Once that was on, I continued with my morning routine of brushing my teeth, doing my hair, putting on makeup...all with my flight suit on because I was so excited!

I had toast and water for breakfast so I would have something in my stomach, but not anything too major that would inevitably make a surprise visit on the plane later.  We drove to Ellington Field (playing Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" on repeat the entire time), and we checked to make sure everything was in order.

Around 8:00, we had a meeting just for the fliers.  It was mainly to remind us of ways to avoid getting sick and things to remember so we could fly for our full 2.1 flying hours.  At 8:30, when we were supposed to start getting our flight meds, one of the guys in charge gave us the bad news: because of the bad weather in the military air space where we were supposed to fly, we had to scrub the mission and wait until the next morning.  That meant I would have another day without coke, eating toast for breakfast, and trying desperately hard to go to sleep when you are too excited.

About 5 minutes before we got the bad news

We had to go back to the hangar where the rest of the team members were and break the bad news to them.  The guys in charge decided that we would have our first flight leave at the same time the next day, then have the second team leave that afternoon.  So since we wouldn't leave until the next day, we had to go get our skittles and M&Ms off the plane so they wouldn't become gross from the heat. 

We met up with our PSTI director from last year and had lunch at Jason's Deli, before getting into our flight suits to walk around Space Center Houston so we could take some pictures.  Space Center Houston is kind of like an indoor playground/science place for kids to explore in.  The workers all wear NASA jumpsuits, so when we started walking around in our green flight suits, we got some amazed looks.  While we were there we paid a visit to the Educator Resource Center which is a place where educators can go to get things to help them teach in their classroom.  Before we left, we HAD to stop and get some souvenirs!

After that, we met with all the other teams to participate in a Digital Learning Network.  DLNs are basically live video chats that NASA has that teachers can sign up for to use in their classrooms.  Our downlink was with some NASA scientists in Hawai'i who were working on In-Situation Resource Utilization, which basically means using what is present on a mission to make things work.  They were testing in Hawai'i because the of the similarity of the geologic conditions to the moon, asteroids, and Mars. 

We were then free to go back to the hotel and were on our own for the night.  We went out to eat then started working on our presentation that we will be giving to some of the departments at NASA to convince them to continue this program for PSTI alumni.

WOW!  It's so crazy to finally be here!  I got in on Sunday around 4:30 and met up with one of the teammates to get our hotel room. We got our stuff in the room, then went to pick up another team member at the airport.  We made a WalMart run on the way back to the hotel and ran into our other team members!  So our first time that all five of us were together in person was at a WalMart...not quite what we were expecting.

Yesterday we started off the morning with our physiology training.  Of course, we had no clue what to expect, so I was kind of surprised to find out it was really more of an instructional time where they told us things that could go wrong.  I think the point was to make us feel a little better and more sure of the situation, but it just made me more nervous.  I knew I could get motion sickness, but I wasn't prepared for hyperventilating and hypoxia, trapped gasses, and protective breathing equipment.  Our instructor told us about all these different things he had seen go wrong, but didn't exactly specify that he witnessed them while he was in the military and not on Zero G aircraft.

Then we went to Ellington Field, which is where we are spending our time.  At Ellington Field, all seven groups who are flying experiments in Zero G have little tables in our hangar.  Inside the hangar with us is the Vomit Comet.  I actually learned there is a difference between the Weightless Wonder and the Vomit Comet.  The Vomit Comet has been retired and is almost memorialized at the entrance to the NASA buildings on Ellington Field.  The Weightless Wonder is still being used, but is not actually the plane we are going on.  We will be going on the G Force One...which I find funny because we won't be doing 1Gs, we will have nearly 2Gs against us, then go into microgravity.  We spent the day going over our experiments, doing ground testing, and preparing for our TRR.  We had to figure out how to work our experiment so we can record the data as accurately as possible, then did lots of tests so we could gather data in Earth conditions of gravity.  The nerve wracking part was hearing about our TRR and what to expect.  TRR stands for Test Readiness Review, and basically it is a large group of NASA people (15-20 people) who question how safe our experiments and outreach items are for flying.  We had been told stories of how small objects had floated away in microgravity that almost caused serious plane accidents. 

We ended the day and had a few hours before our supper with all the other undergraduate teams (because three of the teams that are going with us are people who work for NASA testing things for use on the International Space Station).  Long story short, we got some bad directions from a Toys R Us employee and were almost an hour late to our supper.  But after we ate, we got to talk to the other teams and see where they were from and what their experiments are.  On our Zero G Faculty page on facebook we have been putting links up to their information...definitely worth checking out!

Today, we had the morning to prepare for our TRR.  Our mentor wanted us to make sure we could run both experiments just in case we had to change things, so we switched our groups around and attempted working our second experiment of projectile launching while our other two team members worked on our inertial balance experiment.  After getting so used to our inertial balance yesterday, it was difficult adjusting to their experiment.  Once we collected another round of ground data, we went back to our experiments and prepared for out TRR.  We had a very large group of NASA personnel observing us, and it was kind of stressful, but afterwards Jamie (our mentor) and Ashle (our flight lead) told us they didn't think it could have gone any better.

Once we were done with TRR, we checked out some of the other experiments before we loaded ours onto the Zero G plane.  They only let two team members go up for the load, so Allison and JoAnn (the two other teachers flying with me tomorrow to test the inertial balance experiment) went up on the plane to strap our experiment in.  After a while, I was able to go up and help out.  We had to set up our camera mount so we would be able to video us working on our experiment without random people's feet and heads floating into view.  The bad thing was, Houston is very hot, and since the plane was not running, there was no air conditioning.  We had all the emergency exit doors opened, the back hatch we walked through open, plus the giant hatch at the front of the plane open, but there just wasn't enough breeze to cool us down. 

After all the experiments were loaded, we got to get our FLIGHT SUITS!  All the group was laughing because I was so amped to get my flight suit.  Of course, I had some sizing issues getting a suit that wasn't too short or too big on me.  But I found the perfect one and proceeded to take a ton of pictures!  Then we watched a video about preventing motion sickness...and boy, was it a cheesy video!  But they talked to us about things we can do to help us not get sick.  Our team thinks if we follow those instructions and take the flight meds, we will have a No Kill flight.  "No Kill" means that no one pukes, and even though so many of you have voted that I will puke on our poll, I am going to try my hardest to avoid that!


And now...PICTURES!

My badge and handbook (with Tess on the cover!)

This is the glove box with the experiment I will be testing.  The film canisters have different weights inside and we will determine mass based off the oscillation rate.

The weightless wonder inside our hangar

The goal is to have all check by our name so we can be cleared for flight

By our poster

Veronica working on her experiment

Amber and Allison checking ground data

Jamie (our mentor) explaining some things about the flight

This is the airplane we will be on!

Cheesing in front of the G Force One

Our view of the G Force One this morning

Our outreach items...these are things we can take back to our classrooms to show how they worked in microgravity

In my Zero G Faculty shirt next to our experiment

How the flight board looked this morning

Our Utah friends with their experiment

Lots of cords...

...and still more!

Our Colorado friends with their experiment

As our experiment was about to be loaded onto the plane

On the G Force One with our team sign and experiment

Out team, mentor, and experiment

I was so excited I got my flight suit!!!!

I felt like Superman...

I AM SO READY FOR TOMORROW! LET'S DO THIS!!!!

Fuel Curiosity - Dare Mighty Things

Something I do when I am having a difficult time getting to sleep is go to yahoo.com and look at all the news stories that pop up.  I get my mix of celebrity gossip, technology information, global happenings...it's a plethora of information, and I can normally find something that will bore me enough to help me get to sleep.  This definitely wasn't the case tonight (as evidenced by this late-night post).  After reading articles about Miley Cyrus' tattoo, tricks for your iPhone, and a legally blind beauty queen, I found not one, but two NASA articles.  The first is about a massive vortex forming on the south pole of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.  I'll be honest and say I really just wanted to see the pictures, but I did read the article.  I kept skimming over more yahoo articles until I found one that I knew I had to read then watch the attached video.  This second NASA article is about the Mars rover, Curiosity, that will be landing very soon. 

At my first NASA experience this summer, our whole theme revolved around the Curiosity, so I'm kind of a mini-whiz on it.  Needless to say, when I saw the article about it, my inner NASA nerd started jumping for joy!  I'd seen videos about how the intricate landing process will go, but the commentary this one provided added a little something. 
Just some background details before I give you the video:  Curiosity is much bigger than our last Mars rovers...like the size of a car kind of big.  Because it is so big, and therefore heavier, we can't land it by bouncing it around in a giant inflatable marshmallow capsule like we did with Spirit and Opportunity

  Spirit and Opportunity each had their own landing marshmallow (my term, not NASA's) that basically bounced around like a superball until it came to a halt.  Then the marshmallow opened, the rover's solar panels went out, and as soon as it powered up with the help of the sun, it was off collecting data.  Spirit and Opportunity landed in early and late January (respectively) of 2004 and if my memory serves me correctly, were expected to work for 90 days before the Martian soil would cover the solar panels and the rovers would stop collecting data.  However, the soil blew off, and the rovers surpassed their expected survival rate by far.  After about 6 years, Spirit got stuck in some bad soil in a spot where it couldn't get enough sun to power it, and eventually stopped sending back information.  In those six-ish years, Spirit had traveled about 4.8 miles...yes, you read that right.  Less than a mile a year! 

Curiosity will be landing on August 6th at 5:31 AM from the UTC, which is the Coordinated Universal Time.  I believe most of Texas is 6 hours behind that, which means if there is some possible viewing party for it, I'll be staying up late to watch it!  Curiosity's goal is to study the Martian climate and geology, and collect data for future manned missions to Mars.

I strongly encourage you to go look up some information about the rovers before Curiosity lands.  It's some interesting stuff, and it's happening right now!  Be sure to check out how long it takes to communicate and send signals from Earth to the rovers on Mars...it should be surprising!

As promised, here are the links to the articles:

Mars rover, Curiosity:  http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/mars-rover-landing-seven-minutes-terror-194446094.html

Titan's vortex:  http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/stunning-vortex-appears-saturn-moon-puzzles-scientists-200752158.html

I have been away too long!  Since my last post, I have come back from Ames in California, gone to visit family in Illinois, and gone on a vacation with my friends to the beach.  Limited internet access = limited posts.

With less than a week to go, I'm getting amped for this trip!  I will leave Sunday to meet up with the rest of my crew (the first time we've all been together in person instead of on a video conference!) and we will start our preparations for our flight week!

On my way first flight back from California, my ears started popping during the plane's ascension and I had a strange thought:  Are my ears going to be popping like crazy during my time on the Vomit Comet?  There's pretty easy quick fixes for when you are on a plane (yawning, chewing gum, etc.), but I highly doubt chewing gum or repeatedly yawning would be at the forefront of my mind while I'm simultaneously attempting to conduct an experiment, function in microgravity/hypergravity, and desperately praying not to puke.  I thought maybe we would wear earplugs, but then we wouldn't be able to communicate as easily with each other.  Whatever the answer is, I should know within a week!

Now that I am home for a full week before my next trip starts (as opposed to the two hours or two days for the prior trips), I will be more constantly updating my blog with more about what I'm about to experience.  If you haven't already, don't forget to vote on the poll to your right.  Below are a few more pictures from NASA.  The first three are from part of our robotics and engineering day.  The third picture that looks like a basketball court gone awry is actually from the robotics challenge for high schoolers.  More on that later, though.  The fourth, fifth, and sixth pictures are from the world's largest wind tunnel, which we had an amazing tour of as well.  Again, more on that later.  The last picture is my for fun picture.  If you didn't know, NASA actually has a golf course, complete with the NASA meatball logo on all the hole flags.  We played around on it before we left...don't worry, we watched out for golfers  ;)

NASA Ames Research Center - Week 1

A lot has happened since my last update.  We’ve been so busy here with projects and gatherings that we come back and crash at the hotel before I can work up enough energy to write!  I've been having troubles uploading pictures to this post, which is the reason this update has taken so long, but I'm still working on it!  If anything, I'll provide a link to an online album of the images I would've put on here, because there are some awesome pictures from this past week!

Tuesday we started to work with Michelle Graf, who works in the education department of Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.  She is a part of the BEST program…and it’s definitely one of the best things I’ve participated in.  BEST stands for Beginning Engineering, Science, and Technology.  This program is designed to help students work through the use of the engineering design process.  We started off the day with the challenge of making a bug using a hobby motor that would travel by vibrations, much like how your cell phone moves when it vibrates on a table. 

I’ll be honest…my partner and I were horrible at this.  If I had been given the same challenge, but didn’t have to use a motor I would’ve been fine, but that motor aspect threw me off.  But a lot of the other partnerships made some pretty awesome designs!  Then we went on a tour to the AEE (Ames Exploration Encounter).  It’s NASA’s own baby interactive science museum, and it has some pretty cool things.  I got to walk through an old wind tunnel, try on a (kid-sized, but still awesome) NASA jumpsuit, play flight control, spin like Kristi Yamaguchi, and find out how hard it is to plan launches to other areas.

On Wednesday, we got to spend our entire day with Michelle…and what a day it was!  We started off the morning with a design challenge.  We had to build a lunar buggy that we would test.  It had to go down a ramp and travel at least 50cm, had to hold 2 astronauts (cotton balls), and carry some lunar cargo (AA battery).  Now, that’s a lot of information missing…that’s where the Engineering Design Process comes in:

1) ASK:  What do we need to find out in order to solve our problem.

Some of our questions included:

-What is the angle of the ramp?

-What supplies do we have to create our buggy?

-What are the size restrictions?

-Are there any restrictions about securing the cargo or astronauts?

-Does the buggy need to have any steering mechanisms?

2) IMAGINE:  Think outside the box and synergize.  What is illogical and what are some possible good ideas?  This is the time for students to draw things out and test it in their minds.  Michelle told us we weren’t allowed to know what items we had available to build our buggies out of until the next stage because she didn’t want us to limit ourselves based on what we had available.

3) PLAN:  Pick an idea that seems the most probable and plan it through design plans using the available supplies.  We had to draw at least three different views.  Most people did a front view, top view, and side view.  However, with the design we planned, a front view and top view would look exactly the same.  Instead we did a top and side view and a cross-section.  We typically tend to rush through this stage because we are overly-excited about getting our hands dirty and actually making something.  But Michelle made us spend an agonizing 25 minutes on this part, because the better our drawing plans are, the more thought out the idea becomes.

4) CREATE:  The fun part! 

5) EXPERIMENT:  Once our buggy was complete we got to test it out on the ramp.  Like with any other experiment, we had to conduct multiple tests and had only one variable.  It was interesting to see all the groups’ designs come to life and see how they performed.

6) IMPROVE:  What steps can you take to make your design function better, and sometimes even look better?

There is a lot more information on the BEST website: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/best/

During our testing, our buggy went 410cm, which was much more than the 50cm required!  After everyone tested their buggies, we were hit by some unfortunate news…there was an added part of the challenge!  We were told at that point that we would be dropping our buggies off the stairway of the nearby commissary…about a 25 foot drop!  My partner and I were devastated because we knew that our buggy (that we named Infinity because of the shape of its design) would have extreme difficulties surviving the drop because of its weight.  We were given a budget, but to us it didn’t really matter.  The obvious solution was to create a parachute, but even reinforced grocery bags wouldn’t have held up Infinity.  So my partner and I became very dejected for the 25 minutes we had to go through the engineering design process for this added part of the challenge.  With 5 minutes remaining, we decided to fold some cardboard to make a box, cushion it with 4 grocery bags (which used up our entire “budget”), and put some tape on top so it would fall out when it exploded upon impact.  Imagine our surprise when little Infinity survived the impact and was still able to roll down the ramp more than 50cm!  Of course, it didn’t travel as far as before because there was a slight crack in the side and the bars of clay shifted around to make it roll crookedly…but it rolled!

Thursday we did a few more things with Michelle Graf then took a tour of the Future Flights simulator.  This was basically a facility that deals with the aeronautics aspect of NASA; it was a mock flight control tower that had screens that gave us a digital 360-degree view like they would have at an airport.  They could change the airport, the weather, and even our location within the airport.  Then came the awesome part…we went to Mars!  Using images collected by Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, we were able to get a 360 degree view of the landing sites of the rovers.

Friday we made mini rockets that we launched using PVC pipes and empty 2-liter soda bottles.  We tested out how the trajectory angles affected the distance our rockets would travel, and had tons of fun stomping on soda bottles.  Then for the afternoon, we went to a place called RAFT – Resource Area for Teachers.  This place has a teacher work area much like an expanded version we have at our school…die-cuts, laminators, copiers.  But the cool part was the warehouse.  Companies donate supplies in bulk for really awesome experiments and RAFT makes kits for teachers to use to teach math and science concepts in the classroom.  Put a group of teachers and future teachers in there and you basically have a group of kids in a candy shop.  My kids next year are going to have lots of awesome activities to do…and maybe I’ll invite my old babies back for a visit to try some stuff out as well!