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PART 1: Next WebChat: April 23 with Glen
Davi NEXT WEBCHAT: APRIL 23 WITH GLEN DAVIS
Mechanical technician Glen Davis will be the next guest in the online chat series. Glen works for United Space Alliance (USA) and is responsible for the modification and testing of various shuttle systems. He is known as a Ground Astronaut, because during tests, he sits in the shuttle's cockpit and flips the little switches and dials. Glen is often the last USA employee to leave the Orbiter before launch and the first one to enter the Orbiter after a landing. His chat is scheduled for April 23 from 10-11 am Pacific (1-2 pm Eastern) . Before attending the chat, we strongly suggest that your students read Glen's biography (with job description). If you plan to chat, you must register for the event. Sign up now by sending a brief email note to rsvp-sto@quest.arc.nasa.gov This RSVP is very important, since it will allow us to ensure that the chatroom does not become too crowded. For more details, and for the complete schedule, please visit: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/events/interact.html NEWS ABOUT COLLABORATIVE STUDENT ACTIVITIES
We are starting to get a fair number of classrooms registering for the Shuttle Simulation activity. That's great. By this coming Monday, all who have previously signed up should receive an acknowledgment and a group assignment. We'll introduce you to other learners doing the same "on-orbit experiment". Your small group will then compare results with other classes similarly engaged. If you haven't received this group introduction by April 21, please re-register. Some (non- rocket scientist) folks actually registered but they did not leave any contact information (that's the Internet equivalent of turning in a test without your name). But everybody makes mistakes and we really want to include these people in the Shuttle Sim activity. Also, there is still plenty of time for newcomers to participate; see http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/events/simulations The "Students Improve the Shuttle" activity is not faring as well. We had hoped that students would select a part of the shuttle system for improvement and design those improvements. Since any system is open for improvement (from propulsion to computer systems to astronaut menus to the shuttle paint scheme), we hoped this activity could fit within multiple curriculums. Alas, so far we haven't yet received any designs. We hope that students everywhere are working away and the first ideas just haven't emerged yet. Please consider this opportunity to get your student work published on NASA's web site. More information is available at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/events/improve STUDENT STUMPERS: AN EASY ACTIVITY
If the curriculum supplements above seem a bit too complex to work into your teaching plan, here is a simple activity that will work on the communication skills of your students while challenging them to think creatively. The basic idea is this: kids make riddles for other kids to solve. Students will create a question about the shuttle that they think will be difficult but fun to answer. Pose that question (we'll put it online in the Kids' Corner of the Web), and others will email their responses directly back. The question creator gets to decide if the respondent is right. Then, we'd love to see the results if you'd like to share. We expect the result to be a bunch of kid-kid email exchanges which heat up the Internet. An example question might be: What are some reasons that the Shuttle's external tank is ejected and not carried for the entire mission. That question isn't too tough; we know you can do better than that! Send your original Student Stumpers to Linda at . Also, visit the web at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/kids/stumpers.html VIDEOCONFERENCE ABOUT THE SPACE STATION
A live satellite video conference called "International Space Station: Engineering the Future" will take place May 1, 1997 from 1-3 ET. Launch of the International Space Station will begin in the near future. This national videoconference is an excellent opportunity for anyone who wants a better understanding of the Space Station and the challenges of its planning, design, construction, assembly, habitation, and use. Panelists will include astronauts, engineers, and scientists who will answer questions live! Although presented in non-technical terms, this program is designed for an educated, technical audience. It is targeted at college students; teachers, sharp high school students or very advanced middle schoolers may find it useful as well. This videoconference is presented by NASA, the WHRO Center for Public Telecommunications (Norfolk, VA), and the PBS Adult Learning Satellite Service You may be able to locate a nearby site that is already scheduled to carry the broadcast. Or, for $25, you can register to be your own satellite downlink site. To sign up, call PBS Customer Service at (800) 257-2578 or visit the web site at: http://centauri.larc.nasa.gov/issvc97/ssvideo.html This will be the first of several special International Space Station (ISS) events in the month of May. Soon after the videoconference, Shuttle Team Online will host one or more WebChats with key ISS people. And in the middle of the month, we'll host a live tour (on CU-SeeMe) from the ISS mockup at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Stay tuned for further information about these activities. [Editor's note: Ed leads about 200 system engineers in the launch countdown. Before launch he is made aware of all test anomalies (problems) and Ed's team develops troubleshooting plans to fix these problems. Ed provides provide an engineering "Go" or "No Go" for launch. Between launches, his team practices launches with pretend errors to learn how to handle real problems during real launches. This is Ed's story about the recent launch of STS-83] LAUNCH DAY IS LIKE TAKING A BIG TEST April 8,1997 Just Another Test Day Launch Day is just like taking a big test in school. You study hard, do some homework, review what you already learned, and cram as much knowledge as you can so you can pass. Then you walk into the test and try to figure out how you will finish in the time allowed. Launch Day is the same way for me. In the few days before the launch, I studied the procedure for countdown, again! I took special interest in the items I have to perform. As the Shuttle Project Engineer, I usually bring some work home and study all the safing steps needed, if there is an Abort during the last few minutes prior to launch. I also spent time looking over the history of problems the space shuttle has had since its last flight. In this case, I reviewed the data from the last mission of Columbia, STS-80. Finally, I crammed to understand all of the details of the problems that have occurred over the last few days with the entire launch vehicle. It is a lot of studying for a final exam, but just like when you take that final test and get an A+, you feel great. On the day of the launch I showed up to work around 3:00 a.m. for our scheduled 2:00 p.m. launch time. First, I quickly looked over the logbooks of the Launch Control Center's Integration Console and read the Problem Report list. One of the engineers from the night shift briefs engineering management and myself on all the new problems encountered over the last twelve hours (while I was sleeping). For STS-83, there were six new problems that had to be solved. Five of the six were on the Ground Support Equipment for the launch pad. Each was fixed and everything was ready to support External Tank (ET) fueling. The other problem was a "funny" on Fuel Cell #2 substack voltages. The voltage on a portion of the Fuel Cell was reading higher than we had ever seen before. The substack voltage is a measure of the electrical potential across part of the Fuel Cell. Think of this portion of the Fuel Cell as a battery in your family car. Within that battery there are plates that are charged. This measurement looks at the charge across some of those plates. Working from the Integration Console, I decided to get the engineers for the Fuel Cell on the voice network, or the "net," and decide what we could do to be ready for launch. The decision was to purge the Fuel Cell with gases, and then put a high load on the Fuel Cell, to see if we could correct the problem. Putting a high load on the Fuel Cell is like running all the lights, the air conditioner and the radio in your family car just using the battery (without the engine running). After this test was complete, the Fuel Cell substack voltage came within limits. The system engineers and I were "go" to start External Tank fueling. It was now 6:00 a.m., and we just started the ET fueling. The fueling went very smooth. On the previous flight of Columbia, there was a small hydrogen leak in the orbiter aft fuselage. This time there was no such leak. Throughout the morning there were five other minor problems. Each one was talked through with all the system engineers on the "net." Each time the problem was resolved, or the problem was with a ground system not required for launch. One other problem started out small, but eventually caused us to hold for about 19 extra minutes. After the crew was inside the orbiter, at about 1:00 p.m., the technicians and engineers started to do a leak check of the crew hatch and module. The probe that supplies air to the orbiter to perform the test had a seal that would not stop leaking. The very small seal had to be replaced. The technicians completed the replacement, but that caused the engineers to re-perform the crew hatch leak check. The leak check passed, but the extra air pressure in the crew module had to be vented. (The air vents into the payload bay.) Because the air was vented into an area where we would not want any oxygen, we had to wait until the air (oxygen component of the air) was purged out of the orbiter. We have a Launch Commit Criteria to verify that we have no leaking oxygen. Because the engineer who checks for oxygen and myself could not verify this criteria, I requested we not proceed to launch. The backup Shuttle Project Engineer told the "net" that "SPE was No Go." After about 10 minutes of reviewing the oxygen levels in the payload bay, we decided we could again detect any real oxygen leak. I got the responsible system engineers and management on the "net" and we all decided we were safe to fly. I then gave an SPE "Go" to launch. The last 9 minutes went without any problems, and STS-83 successfully launched into the afternoon sky of Cocoa Beach. A day or so after a great launch, the Fuel Cell #2 problem resurfaced. The condition worsened until the Fuel Cell was shut down and STS-83 had to come home early. All of the data on the fuel cell was reviewed by hundreds of engineers throughout the country and, for crew safety, the Fuel Cell was shut down. As you can see, the launch day is just like a test day at school, we are always challenged to learn more and apply today's lessons to ensure tomorrow's successes. [Editor's note: Patty work with scientists from universities around the world to help them fly biology experiments aboard the space shuttle. She help them analyze what they want to do and figures out ways to do it. For STS-83, she worked on the Astro/PGBA-02 mission (Astro Plant Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus) which involved growing spinach and mini-cabbages in space] HOW TO GET YOUR LAUNDRY DONE AT LAUNCH TIME! April 4, l997 I've finally made time for my first field journal entry. Things are hectic here, as I anticipated. So much so that I walked into my supervisor's office two days ago with a big trash bag. I explained that the hours for the laundry room at my apartment were only from 9 to 9, and that I wasn't going to buy any more new underwear and socks, and would she please do a load of my laundry at her home. The funny thing is that she agreed. I think I will try to work this into a regular scam. Now we are about 5 hours before launch--launch on Friday, April 4, that is. We've already had one launch delay of 24 hours, but that happened early enough on Tuesday evening so that most of us could all go home early (10 p.m.!!). Getting notice of a delay before you reach a critical part of merging your flight hardware and science makes it much easier to adjust. In this case, the call came not long before the plants started to get put in their nutrient packs and then into the PGBA unit, so we didn't have any backtracking to do. All we did was slip a lot of our events a full day. Other than that little glitch, all of the preflight planning and coordination is going very well--so far. So well that I am spending most of my time preparing for upcoming missions and doing many other small projects. For this team, it seems like I've mainly been running around, finding little things that the scientist or PGBA hardware team forgot to bring, or had a particular problem with. I've been a gopher for special tape, scissors, lost packages, coat hangers, a vacuum, lost badging, lost personnel, and a bandsaw! Don't think that this group of people is disorganized--this is actually one of the smoothest operations I've seen in awhile. If we do launch the shuttle today (and conditions look favorable), we'll set up the ground control this evening. We will also verify a network connection from the lab here at Kennedy Space Center to the home lab at the University of Colorado. This link will allow the hardware team and scientists to monitor the ground control unit from Boulder, and adjust the unit so that conditions on the shuttle and in the laboratory are pretty similar. It also allows them to monitor the unit from Boulder. It will be one of my jobs during the mission to make sure that the network connection stays clear, react to any problems (like an unexpected power outage), and act as the eyes, ears, and sometimes hands of the science and hardware team while the shuttle is in orbit. The team is a lot of fun, and I have enjoyed working with them. However, my pets are getting annoyed with me, I am behind in my school work, and I think I could use 30 hours of non-stop sleep. So a liftoff will be a good thing, although I hate to lose my laundry service! More later!!! Patty [Editor's note: Mindy was a tracking officer recently at the California Space Camp. Over the next few weeks we'll share some experiences of various campers, to show that students can take on space roles now before they leave school.] I Came to Space Camp with My Best Friend April 1, 1997 Today, I went on a mission and trained to use the orbiter. I read from a script and pushed different buttons. I used a simulator for walking on the moon, which had lots of springs on it. I was the Tracking Officer for the mission, but we had trouble watching the clock and keeping track of what we were doing. I also learned about how to make tiles for the shuttle. I came to Space Camp with my best friend. I went to Space Camp in Florida before I came here. I wanted to come here because my family is moving. In Florida, we went to Kennedy Space Center. The training center was bigger than the one here [in California.] I like Space Camp because I like how the shuttle works and how stuff floats around. Daily Stuff Today, we are building rockets and will launch them. We will get to see airplanes, and are going to Great America to see a movie about space. We usually wake up between 7:00 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. The people sleeping on the bottom bunk can shower in the morning, and the people on the top can shower at night. We have breakfast at about 8:00 a.m., lunch at about 12:30 p.m., and dinner at 6:00 p.m. The meals are good -- so far we've had Chinese food, tacos, and turkey. I hope to learn things that I can tell my science teacher about. I took pictures for her and other teachers from my school. I want to learn more about how the shuttle works. [Editor's note: Karina's group is responsible for training the astronauts for their spacewalks, or EVAs. She teaches the astronauts how to use the spacesuits and also how to perform the job they're going to be doing while they're out EVA. Karina's group also works in Mission Control during the EVAs to monitor both the spacesuits and the astronaut's progress in accomplishing the intended task.] Real-Time Repairs to Hubble March 20, l997 Today, I thought I'd tell you about a particularly interesting and enjoyable experience I had recently. On a recent shuttle flight, STS-82, I was an OJT in the EVA back room of Mission Control. That was the flight on which astronauts replaced some instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope. OJT stands for "On the Job Training," and means you sit in to watch and learn from an experienced flight controller during a flight. Besides the fact that it was exciting to be sitting right there in the middle of all the action, an interesting problem came up that we needed to solve. But first, let me give you a little background. The part of Mission Control that you see on TV is called the Flight Control Room, or FCR (pronounced "Ficker"). It's also known as the "front room." Many of the people in the front room have additional support personnel in a "back room" - what we call a Multi-Purpose Support Room or MPSR (pronounced "Mipser"). My group is responsible for the EVAs (spacewalks), so we have a person in the FCR, and two people in our MPSR - one is responsible for the spacesuit and one monitors the tasks the astronauts are doing during the spacewalk. I was working in the MPSR with the Task flight controller. Most days, we work normal daytime hours in an office - planning and training astronauts for spacewalks, but DURING a spacewalk we have to man the EVA console around the clock so I can end up working some really strange hours! While the crew is sleeping, we are busy making plans for the next day's spacewalk - rescheduling events if necessary, coming up with solutions to any problems that occurred during the last spacewalk, and monitoring any shuttle problems that might affect the success of the upcoming spacewalks. My shift on console for this flight was from 12:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. - we were on console for about 6 hours before the crew wake-up, and then by the time the astronauts had checked out their spacesuits and begun putting them on, the next shift would come in to monitor the actual spacewalk. So, every day I'd wake up at around 11 a.m., go to work for my shift and then stay to watch the spacewalk until about 2 a.m., get to bed by 3, and do it all over again! OK, now for the problem we had to solve on this flight. When the astronauts grappled Hubble with the shuttle arm and went out for their first spacewalk, they noticed that the telescope looked like it had gotten a sunburn - some of the silvery insulation that protects the sensitive electronics was cracked and peeling. The insulation has several layers, so it's called Multi-Layer Insulation, or MLI. It was the top aluminum-foil-like layer of insulation that was peeling. Well, as I said, this insulation is important for protecting the electronics from the temperature extremes of space, so something had to be done to determine how bad the peeling was, and find a way to fix it. The shuttle will not visit Hubble for another three years, so we needed to do as much repair on this flight as possible to protect the telescope until the next servicing mission. We did not have the materials to just repair all the insulation onboard the shuttle, so the people in charge of the Hubble Telescope looked at all the photos the astronauts took of peeling insulation, and knowing which electronics were most sensitive or most exposed, they determined which areas were the most important to repair. While they were doing that, people from my group, as well as other engineers, astronauts and Hubble experts, were determining what materials were on the shuttle that we could possibly use to make patches for the insulation. If you saw "Apollo 13," it was a little like that scene where the carbon dioxide level in the spacecraft is becoming dangerously high and they have to figure out a way to use a square air filter in a round hole, and a guy comes in and dumps a bag of parts on the table and says "This is what they have onboard, so this is what you've got to work with." It turned out that we had some MLI repair kits, and some extra insulation for parts of the solar array that could be used, so a bunch of people went into a room and started figuring out how to make a patch out of those materials and how to attach it to the telescope, using things like cable ties, wire, and alligator clips. Then they had to write step-by-step procedures to send up to the astronauts to explain how to make the patches. This is an example of the kind of real-time problem solving that we do as flight controllers. When you find a problem, you have to first determine what the extent of the problem is, then figure out what materials you have to work with, and finally come up with a solution and send it up to the crew. And you don't have all the time in the world to do it in, so it can get very hectic, but everybody really pulls together for a team effort, and I think that's exciting! STATUS OF STS-83 POST FLIGHT PROCESSING
Below and in the future, we'll provide some details about the post flight work being done after STS-83 and the and subsequent processing of Columbia as it gets ready to fly again. These reports will contain jargon and unfamiliar terms; our intent is not to confuse you, but to provide a glimpse at all the steps involved. Detailed daily reports about Columbia's processing can be found at the NASA Shuttle Status web site at http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/status/status.htm Since the last updates-sto message, Columbia's fuel cell No. 2 was removed and replaced over the weekend and then shipped to the vendor. This is the part that caused the STS-83 mission to return from space 12 days early. Technicians completed work to replace fuel cell No. 1 as part of the normal maintenance; leak checks are now underway. Post-flight inspections of Columbia's windows found them in good condition. Work began this week to remove the forward reaction control system for thruster replacement work scheduled in the Hypergol Maintenance Facility. Inspections of Columbia's main propulsion system continue and preparations are in work for main engine removal on Friday and Saturday. The STS-83 booster nozzles are en route to Utah and should arrive later this week. If this is your first message from the updates-sto list, welcome! To catch up on back issues, please visit the following Internet URL: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/updates To subscribe to the updates-sto mailing list (where this message came from), send a message to: listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov In the message body, write these words: subscribe updates-sto CONVERSELY... To remove your name from the updates-lfm mailing list, send a message to: listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov In the message body, write these words: unsubscribe updates-sto If you have Web access, please visit our "continuous construction" site at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/shuttle |
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