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Feb. 12 1999

My name is Jamie Silva. I am a senior at Broadway High School. I also work part-time as a LTP technician for WANG I-NET at NASA Ames Research Center. I will be corresponding with Seth Carter in the desert for six days. I will also be helping and supporting him with pictures and interviews. F or the six days I am stationed here I will be posting my journals on the web site. So I hope you enjoy.

Today I woke up at 8:00a.m. Since I am in the process of getting my license I was unable to have a car issued to me. So Seth is nice enough to be my ride to the site. We arrived at the site around 9:00 AM and set up the equipment for the live event that was scheduled for 11:30a.m. I almost forgot how to set up the real media because it has been so long since the last time I used it.

Luckily Seth is overly experienced with the software and equipment so we didn't have a problem. The wind was blowing hard so we set up beside a truck that blocked us from it. We interviewed Ted Roush and Jeff Moersh, the operators for the two different spectr ometer. Hans Thomas asked Roush and Moersh question while Seth operated the camera. I was manning the chat window to make sure questions that were asked by the viewers got answered. The interview lasted for 25 minutes. Not many viewers attended the event because some schools didn't have school today. Otherwise it would have gone for longer. We didn't have many problems. At 1:30pm we broke for lunch.

Seth and I went to town and had Bugger King. We came back to the site around 2:30p.m. I wrote my journal for today and helped Seth watch the Marsokhod while Anne Wright was testing it. I was so amazed of the principle of this robot. It is really very astounding and breath taking to see this magnificent robot maneuver up close and personal. I feel very privileged to be a part of this project. Since this weekend is a holiday most of the scientists took it off and went home. There wasn't that much for us to do. We helped put the Marsokhod away. In order to do that we had to pick it up and put it on to a cart and roll it on to a ramp. The Marsokhod weighs about 200lbs. It almost seemed impossible but we did it. When there wasn't anything for us to do Seth and I did a little 4-wheeling in the desert. We went across a huge dried lake. It was a strange experience. Just the fact that we where driving on what was at the bottom of a great lake. We found a lot of old cans and bottles. Around 3:30 we left the site and I had dinner at a Mexican restaurant with Ted Roush, Keith Horton, Anne Wright, and Seth Carter. Over all I had a very exciting first day.