Busy at KSC

Hi everyone!

Although I have participated in chats with the Space Team Online, this is my first journal so I feel like I have a lot to tell you. As you know from my biography, I work in the Engineering Development Laboratory. Over the past year I have been involved with the development of a hydrogen detector/calibration system, and more recently with an environmental engineering project that was set up in a heat plant in the middle of the summer!

But despite the heat, I found the project to be fascinating. Ordinarily, electric plants give off steam that contains pollutants --namely nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides. These pollutants are harmful to the earth's ozone layer as well as to our lungs. A team of engineers developed a unique process to convert these pollutants to an intermediary compound that can easily be combined with water for disposal. This water-based disposal can be used for fertilizer and is a great alternative to polluting the air. Michelle Collins is the NASA engineer who completed this project for her Ph.D. in environmental engineering. Michelle designed a system of pipes to siphon off a part of the steam that is naturally disposed of in the air at the heat plant in order to use for the experiment. Because the steam had relatively no pollutants present, pollutants were introduced into the system for the experiment. The goal was to see what percentage of the injected pollutants could successfully be converted into a liquid. This project involved knowledge of chemical properties, chemical reactions, as well as physics. I was inspired to dust off the old chemistry and physics books so that I could understand all facets of the project. Also I learned about different industrial aspects to ensuring the health and safety of people.

Since that time I have been awarded the George M. Low NASA Fellowship. This fellowship is a one-year program of engineering graduate study. I have chosen to work on a Ph.D. in electrical engineering emphasizing digital image processing. I am particularly interested in biomedical imaging processing techniques utilizing MRI, CT, and ultrasound technology. I am excited about being able to devote myself to full-time study but equally understand that the work will be challenging. I will learn the fundamentals of sensor technology with application towards image processing utilizing 1,2, and 3-dimensional techniques. This knowledge will be useful in developing automatic detection systems such as for the hydrogen detection system that I have worked on, landing systems for aircraft, as well as medical imaging projects including better ways to detect breast cancer. These are all current research areas at NASA.

I have been involved in several programs here at Kennedy Space Center that I am very proud of. One of these programs is the Kennedy Space Center Y2000 Marrow Registration Drive that is going on at this time. Please visit our web site to find out more about this program!

This is the third year that I am co-chairing this event for NASA and what a job it is! We are coordinating our efforts with companies from Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Air Station, and Patrick Air Force Base. Our goal is to educate the entire workforce so that they are aware of what marrow is, why we need to have marrow registration drives, and why we need for all of our employees to consider becoming potential marrow donors. But I will talk to you more about this next time.

I will also be participating in the Quest sponsored