FIELD JOURNAL

New Projects

I just came back from a meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was assigned to work on a new payload a couple of months ago, and they wanted to get everyone together to talk about what is going to happen when it goes into space on the shuttle.

The payload is kind of cool. Its name is XSS-10, but we call it Microsat. Why? Because it is a small satellite, it only weighs about 40 pounds! The microsat will ride up into space in the payload bay. The microsat will be connected to a "carrier". This "carrier" does exactly what it says, it carries smaller payloads into space. The shuttle robotic arm will take the carrier out of the payload bay and let the carrier fly in space by itself. The shuttle will then move far away (in fact, on the other side of the world!).

After the shuttle is far away, the microsat is turned on, and it pushes itself away from the carrier. Then, the microsat turns around and takes pictures of the carrier! Imagine trying to take pictures of something from many different angles when you are flying through space at 18,000 mph! The tricky thing is the microsat does this by itself. Humans don't control it. It is programmed to take the pictures and to fly around the carrier.

Why would we want to see if this works? Well, satellites are very expensive (sometimes over 1 Billion Dollars!), but they sometimes break. It would be nice to be able to send something up to the satellite to look and see why the satellite isn't working. If the microsat works, then people on the ground could look and say, "Hey, this piece is broken off!" and hopefully be able to find a way to make the satellite work without that piece.