|
   |
 |
                 
|
UPDATE # 35 - January 23, 1998PART 1: Students as publishers STUDENTS AS PUBLISHERS
A reworked activity on Space Team Online offers your students an opportunity to publish their work on our NASA Web site. We are looking for a variety of creative student contributions, including artwork, writing, poems, student autobiographies, etc. All grade levels (K-12) are encouraged to submit their best efforts and become part of our Junior Space Team Online crew. An example of what you'll find there includes: A pointer to the Russell Space Center (RSC) Web page. RSC is located at Richard B. Russell Elementary in Smyrna, Georgia. The center is run by motivated fifth graders trained in space flight operations. Their Web site will track the maiden voyage of the Star Sailor 1 (OV-109), scheduled for liftoff on April 23, 1998, at 10:40 EST! "Our hats go off to the brave astronauts and flight controllers who are about to go on this unprecedented journey." Please share the work of your own brave space explorers. See details at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/kids/work.html QUEST CELEBRATES BLACK HISTORY MONTH
This February is Black History month in America. On Quest, we will be celebrating by featuring chats with a variety of accomplished black people who work at NASA (and elsewhere). In addition, a set of activities shows how the Big Dipper was used to help guide slaves to freedom. Please join us for these special events. Though a complete schedule is still being put together, current details can be found at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ltc/special/mlk/ Please note: to participate in the chats, you will have to register ahead of time. [Editor's note: Gisele has worked in the Continual Improvement (CI) Office on various clerical and administrative functions. Recently she has been involved in KSC's effort to improve and certify the quality of their work.] REVIEWING AGREEMENTS HELPS QUALITY CONTROL
Gisele Altman http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/altman.html January 20, l998 Happy New Year! 1998 has brought new changes for me professionally. I am now a management assistant for the Workforce Planning group of the Administration office at Kennedy Space Center. This means that I am gradually working my way out of the clerical field and into organizational management - which is what my bachelor's degree is in. Currently, I am working on two special projects: * Customer Agreements * Business Objectives and Agreements. Both of these items are linked to ISO 9000. This is a system that helps organizations track the quality of their products and services. The concept of ISO 9000 is that all major companies should function the same way and with the same high quality standards. Through various audits, a company can become ISO 9000 certified if they are some of the best in the world. NASA is striving to become ISO 9000 certified. That is where the customer agreements and business objectives come into play. Customer agreements refer to agreements that NASA has with other agencies. These agreements range from something simple, such as allowing teachers to do research at our facility, to something complex, such as being able to land the shuttle in Africa in case of an emergency. Regardless of whether these agreements are with government, civilian, foreign, or domestic agencies, in order to be the best that we can be, we must first be aware of who our customers are. All of NASA's customer agreements are being inventoried for accuracy and validity. That means reading each one (presently, there are over 200), and determining whether or not they really are agreements and if they are up to date. I am on the committee that is making those decisions. I am keeping the database for the committee which requires constant update. Since I'm working with such a high number of documents, I rely heavily on my organizational skills. Business Objectives and Agreements (BOA), on the other hand, are agreements within NASA Kennedy Space Center directorates. These agreements identify various aspects of every directorate at KSC. They cover areas such as responsibilities of that directorate's personnel, direct and indirect customers and mission objectives - in other words, the purpose of these directorates. As a management assistant, my job was to review and assess each BOA for accuracy. If I discovered any errors or conflicting information about these agreements, I notified the directorate in writing and recommended corrections and changes. I am looking forward to a busy and productive year! [Editor's note: Stephanie is an experiment integration engineer. She interprets electrical schematics and writes test procedures to test all the experiment power cables to make sure that they were built correctly. In this series, Stephanie is sharing her experience with CHeX, an experiment that flew recently in space. CHeX involves studying Helium at very specific temperatures. Last time, CHeX had completed 27 measurements and Stephanie described "command windows." The story below is filled with very technical concepts.] Stephanie Stilson OTHER EXPERIMENTS CHANGE THE RESULTS OF CHEX November 26, 1997 (Flight Day 8) The drift rate of the high resolution thermometer has been determined by measuring the apparent drift rate of the lambda transition temperature. This measured value (4E-14 Kelvin/sec) is the best that has ever been achieved on the ground or in space. Also, after an excursion of 1mK above the lambda transition, the thermometers did not drift by even 1nK. The CHeX team is very excited by this information. The thermometers are working even better than expected. November 27, 1997 (Flight Day 9) CHeX continues to perform general scans to collect high temperature data. The current tally is 31 high resolution sweeps and 4 high temperature sweeps. We have been able to make a definite correlation between the activities of another USMP-4 experiment, the Isothermal Dendritic Growth Experiment (IDGE), and our temperature readings. When the IDGE heater is activated we see an increase in our Stage 5 heater readings. Discussion about this continues. November 28, 1997 (Flight Day 10) Today was spent gathering data concerning the heating effect other instruments are having on CHeX. The orbiter's Ku band antenna was turned on and the heating rate of the calorimeter increased by 3.5 picoKelvin/sec which corresponds to 0.35 nanoWatts of heat. Later, another USMP-4 experiment called the Space Acceleration Measurement System (SAMS) was turned off and then on again to determine the degree of heat input to the calorimeter. When SAMS power was re-applied, the calorimeter heating rate increased by 37 pK/s (4nW). This effect is approximately 10 times the heating effect of the Ku band antenna seen earlier. The SAMS recorder was also turned on but no heating effect was observed. It is thought that SAMS fans may be the cause of the increase in power. This information is very important to the science team since CHeX is recording such precise temperature measurements. Vibrations, from various sources, cause a change in temperature; therefore producing errors in the experiment data. November 29, 1997 (Flight Day 11) High resolution sweeps through the transition region continue. We are altering our data gathering schedule to accommodate for the possibility of an early USMP-4 finish due to SPARTAN activities. If the agency decides to re-deploy SPARTAN, then the main thrusters of the orbiter will be used to reposition for the deployment. CHeX cannot conduct science when these thrusters are active because the necessary microgravity conditions no longer exist. Decisions about the SPARTAN have not yet been made, but it is always best to plan. The worst case scenario would be that CHeX would have to stop gathering data before the supply of Helium is depleted. We hope this won't happen. STATUS OF COLUMBIA PROCESSING
No new information was available in time to meet our publishing deadline. We expect this feature to resume next week.
|
||
|
|
|
