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PART 1: The shuttle team answers your question
As a reminder, people of NASA's shuttle team are available until at least July 31 of 1997 to answer your email questions. In most cases, you will receive a direct reply within 10 days to two weeks. There are a few basic procedures to follow when asking questions: 1) Before emailing, please first check to see if your question has already been answered. See http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/ask for the archive of existing question/answer pairs. 2) Send your questions to this address: question-sto@quest.arc.nasa.gov 3) If you have several questions which are unrelated, we ask that you please send each unrelated question in a separate email message rather than as one message with many different questions. While this may be inconvenient, it is important because it will help us to keep track of the questions and ensure that no question remains unanswered. Messages that do not follow this request will be unnecessarily delayed as we go through the extra step of splitting up the messages ourselves. SHUTTLE TEAM ONLINE AUDIENCE LIKE SLUGS
Although we have received plenty of kind feedback from teachers about Shuttle Team Online, we have not had much participation in our student collaborative activities. For example, we hoped to publish students designs for a shuttle system improvement. But to date, we have not received even a single submittal. NOT ONE! We realize the school year is rapidly drawing to a close and therefore we don't we don't have high hopes that formal classrooms will respond to this challenge. But since Shuttle Team Online will be active through July, there is still time for motivated individuals to get involved. So if you know of a pre-college student that might enjoy spending his/her free time creating a design and publishing it on this NASA server, please encourage them to participate. For more details, see http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/events/improve [Editor's note: Tracy works in Experiment Integration, where she gets experiment hardware ready for launch. She installs the hardware and then test all the power, video, cooling, and data interfaces. All this testing helps makes sure that the experiment will work successfully once the mission begins.] FIXING A SHORT CIRCUIT IN THE MICROGRAVITY SCIENCE LAB (MSL)
Tracy Gill http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/gill.html May 13, l997 In the ultimate do-over of the space program, we have been busy getting the MSL-1 Spacelab ready for flight again. Normally, we do the bulk of our work on Spacelab in Kennedy Space Center's Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building. However, for this unusual re-flight, we did not even remove the Spacelab from the orbiter, and all of us folks who work on the experiments and Spacelab are having to do our work inside Columbia in the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) Bay 1, which is about 6 miles from the O&C Building. Aside from the obvious difficulty of not working in your own building, it has also been more of a challenge to do our work in the OPF because not all of the same equipment is available in the OPF; we had to make special provisions to move some of our ground support equipment and build new types of power cables just to plug in to a different type of facility power outlet than we have in the O&C Building. I spent the first few days of this entry period repairing a portion of the High Packed Digital Television System, or Hi-Pac for short. The Hi-Pac system provided by Teledyne Brown Engineering in Huntsville, Alabama, has six encoders which convert a standard analog video signal, such as the one you see on your home TV, and encodes it into a digital format which can be compressed. This digital compression allows NASA to transmit multiple video images in the same satellite bandwidth it takes to broadcast one analog signal. This allows for observing multiple activities at the same time, such as watching an astronaut work on the Combustion Module (CM-1) rack and observing the effect of the astronaut's adjustments on the video image on the CM-1 experiment from another camera inside the rack. During the flight of STS-83, one of the encoders suddenly stopped producing data. I wrote a problem report and a troubleshooting procedure to isolate the fault. Once we went into the Spacelab in OPF 1 on May 1 and removed the Hi-Pac cover, we found that an internal circuit breaker for the failed encoder had popped open. To verify that a short circuit in the encoder caused this failure, we disconnected all of the cabling to it and we disconnected the cabling to an identical one next to it. There was an obvious difference in the readings that led us to believe that a power filter in the encoder box had short circuited. We obtained a replacement encoder, bench-tested the replacement to verify it operated correctly, and then installed it into to the Hi-Pac unit on May 2. A week later on May 9, I ran another procedure during Spacelab power up for a complete Hi-Pac system test to verify it was ready to support the reflight of MSL-1. Hi-Pac passed successfully, and it's ready to go. The Spacelab power up was part of four days of around-the-clock testing we did to verify the Spacelab and all of the MSL-1 experiments were ready for flight. The testing concluded May 13 and went very well with only a few minor problems. Now we're securing the payload and getting ready for another beautiful launch. [Editor's note: Jacki was a Mission Controller recently at the California Space Camp. In this series of shorts, we've been sharing some experiences of various campers, to show that students can take on space roles now before they leave school. This is the last report in the series] MY SECOND TIME AT SPACE CAMP April 1, 1997 This is my second time at Space Camp. My sister went to Space Academy in Florida. She made friends from Denmark there and has kept in touch. When I got here I found a friend from school that I didn't know was going to be here and there is a boy from her class too. I'm in sixth grade in Middle School. I was the INCO on the Mission. INCO is part of Mission Control and I tell the public what is happening with the Mission. I wore a head set and said things like "the External Tank has separated". The mission went okay. People were repeating themselves sometime. My favorite simulator was the 1/6 chair or moon chair. You try three walks: the slow motion jog the bunny hop, and the side shuffle. There is a messed up slinky on the floor and you try to pick it up. Its hard to do because I jumped too far. Another simulator is the Multi-axis trainer. Sometimes they have this at county fairs. Here you can tell them if you want to go faster and it's fun. They have a spin chair too. It's blue and you go around and around and then you try to grab a stick that is dropped through your hand and I think I was slower after I rode the simulator. When I grow up I want to be an astronaut, I think. I'm not sure. [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 on 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.] MAKING CABLES FEEL REAL
Karina Shook http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/shook.html March 20, l997 Today, I'll describe a couple of the things I'm working on in my role as an astronaut trainer and flight controller for Extravehicular Activity (spacewalks). Since we're gearing up to start building the International Space Station within the next year, those of us who train the astronauts are working to make sure the training mockups are "flight-like" - that they are as close as possible and practical to the real flight hardware so that the crew gets realistic training. One of the things I'm working on is learning about the electrical cables that will be on the Pressurized Mating Adapters, making sure that the mockups we use for training in the water tank (see my bio for a description of this facility) are similar to the real thing in terms of look and stiffness. It's not as easy as it sounds! There are MANY different size cables, and most of the time there are several cables twisted together. The stiffness of the cables depends on what they're made of, how thick they are, and where they're located on the space station - a cable that faces the Sun will be warmer and thus more flexible than one that's in the shade and very cold. In order to find the information I need, I have to talk to people who are designing the cables, people who have tested them in the cold in vacuum chambers here on Earth, and astronauts who conducted some tests of real space station electrical cables on a shuttle flight last year. There are also test reports to read. Then once I know what the real cables are like, I need to figure out a way to make the ones we use to train the astronauts feel like the real thing. Another project I'm working on is the Console Handbook that my group uses. The Console Handbook is a reference document that flight controllers use "on console" - in Mission Control. Our Console Handbook contains information specific to the spacesuits and to doing spacewalks. We're in the process right now of updating the book. That's also not an easy task. Every piece of information in the book needs to be verified for accuracy. What goes in the book is entirely up to us - we have to decide what information is needed on console and put it in a format that is easy to read and understand "real-time" during a flight. The tricky part about this is that I am new in this group and have not worked in Mission Control yet! Without any experience, it's hard to know what kind of information is most useful to a flight controller. In order to find that out, I talk with the more experienced people in my group. It's definitely a learning experience for me! STATUS OF STS-94 PROCESSING
Below and in the future, we'll provide some details about the post flight work being done after STS-83 and the subsequent processing of Columbia as it gets ready to fly again as STS-94. 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 nose landing gear was closed for tile work and the heat shield installation on the three main engines was completed. Auxiliary power unit installation and leak/functional tests are complete. Also complete are the landing gear functional tests. Technicians noted a frayed pyrotechnic cable in the orbiter's cargo bay. The pyrotechnic device would be used to jettison the Ku band antenna if it were unable to retract in flight. Because of its location, the cable was repaired before the Spacelab transfer tunnel could be installed. While working close-outs in Columbia's mid-body, technicians noted cracks in two fuse holders that are part of the orbiter's power distribution system. The appropriate assembly and installed. Subsequent retests were good. The Spacelab transfer tunnel is planned to be installed May 29. The roll to the Vehicle Assembly Building is currently targeted for late in the evening of June 4.
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