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S P A C E T E A M O N L I N EUPDATE # 70 - February 15, 1999 PART 1: And the winner is. . . AND THE WINNER IS . . .
We have had a grand winner of the Challenge Project. This contestant answered all but one of the questions and finally wrote an amazingly accurate description of the picture as follows: "James Cameron stayed overnight in the station to get his aquanaut status. The day is September 22, 1998. He is being photographed by Jessica Schmidt from the Indiana School for the Deaf, who is getting her SCUBA certification. They are at Emerald Lagoon, Key Largo, Florida." The only teensy inaccuracy is that the students from Indiana School for the Deaf were SCUBA certified before arriving in Florida. Wow! I'm impressed with the detail he was able to extract and that he recognized Jessica with her "in Florida" hairstyle. For those of you who missed out, the picture is in the Photo Gallery at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/challenge/photos/aquanauts/JCC00004.JPG Andrew Dalton, our winner, writes, "We all had a go at researching for the competition, me, my wife, and kids. The kids loved it, and we think that's the key to it all, learning about the things you enjoy and love. This was and will be a great learning experience for us. We often go star-gazing; we have a small telescope for the girls and our niece has a large telescope as well, so I guess star-gazing is a family trait!" Andrew lives with his two daughters Michelle and Shannon (aged 9 1/2 years and 5 years) in Paralowie, a suburb of Adelaide in South Australia. He's a Maintenance Technician and trains students in engineering. He was interested in how the Analog station works and how it was put together. A packet of NASA goodies is being sent to Andrew and family, including a model of the station. Enjoy! I hope we'll have great participation in our next puzzle. Stay tuned. Linda
QuestChats require pre-registration. ->Wednesday, February 17, 1999 - 10:00 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST) Welcome to our regularly scheduled video tour of the International Space Station mockup and training facility from Johnson Space Center. You will be able to ask your questions during the tour and have them answered during the event. For more information see: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ltc/sto/tours/ ->Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 9:30 a.m. PST (12:30 p.m. EST) Some Assembly Required - Give your students an inside look at what it takes to assemble the people, the parts, and the plan for the world's largest orbiting research facility, the International Space Station. Join program1 at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ltc/sto/iss/program.html Program 2 is listed on the 25th below. ->Monday, February 23, 1999 - 10:00 a.m. PST (1:00 p.m. EST) Space Team Online presents: International Space Station Tours live, from Kennedy Space Center. In this segment we will present an overview of the program and meet some of the people who will be giving you an insider view into construction and assembly of the ISS. http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ltc/sto/iss/series2.html ->Tuesday, February 23, 1999 - 9:00 a.m. PST (Noon EST) Dawn Riley, First female captain of America's Cup Team See her profile at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/frontiers/riley.html Register for the chat at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/frontiers/schedule.html ->Wednesday, February 24,1999 -10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST) Ruth Simmons, First female to head a major University as president of Smith College - See her profile at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/frontiers/ Register for the chat at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/frontiers/schedule.html ->Thursday, February 25, 1999 - 9 a.m. PST (Noon EST) Oran Cox, NASA Quest, QuestChat Project Manager. Oran is also a graduate student at San Jose State University. See his profile at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/qchats/ocox.html Register for the chat at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ltc/special/mlk99/ ->February 25, 1999 -10:00 a.m. PST (1:00 p.m. EST) Make It Your Business - Join viewers for a world-wide, interactive forum to discuss the global implications of commercialization of the space industry. A diverse panel of top NASA, university, and commercial researchers, international investors, and other experts will take your questions and comments on the air. Join in at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ltc/sto/iss/program.html For continuing Female Frontiers schedule see: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/frontiers/schedule.html For March Space Team Online chats see: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/chats [Editor's note: Sherri is an electrical engineer and works on the computer systems that control all of the subsystems on the International Space Station. We hope you'll be inspired to join our ISS series. You'll want to see the illustrated version of this journal at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/journals/carlson/02-08-99.html ] BEHIND THE SCENES FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/carlson.html Interviewer: Brandt Secosh February 8, l999 Life at Kennedy Space Center has been rewarding and challenging for Sherri Carlson! She has been involved in many of NASA's missions and has always found the time for education outreach programs such as the Space Team Online and the Virtual Science Mentor program. Let's take a look at Sherri's latest contributions to the International Space Station effort! As an electrical and computer engineer working on the International Space Station (ISS), I have the good fortune of getting to see the hardware up close and personal before it goes to space. Most of what I do is behind-the-scenes work. I don't actually cut the metal or weld it together to make the pieces. Rather, I think of ways to test the pieces before it goes to space to be sure it works once it is there. It's a little like test driving it although it doesn't move! But to see that the computers are all working well and working together, that is one heck of a test drive for me! Here in the Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF) at the Kennedy Space Center, we are working on a very significant and complex test of the ISS called MEAT. No, actually that's M.E.I.T., and it stands for Multi-Element Integrated Test, but we do call it 'meat'. "I'm a MEIT-head" is one of the silly jokes we pass around. There are many of us working this test, probably close to a hundred of us. There are engineers, technicians, managers, clerks, safety and quality specialists, and even astronauts working on this test. Some of the workers get to work in the high-bay of the SSPF by the actual pieces of the Station. Mostly these are technicians, men, and women specially trained to handle the flight hardware. Since I work with the computer systems, my work can be performed remotely from a control room upstairs from the pieces in the high-bay. All the computers we need to communicate with and test the pieces are available to us here. You can see in this picture there are many of us working at computer consoles and wearing headsets to communicate with each other and with the workers in the high-bay. We work shifts around the clock during the test since it is much less expensive to get everything running and keep it running than it is to keep turning it on and off every day. It is also better for the components. Since we work around the clock, someone gets to work in the middle of the night and early in the morning. I got to work at 5 a.m. for the weeks we were in test. Some of the other engineers brought doughnuts to keep us going..... Specifically my job is to think of things that might go wrong with the ISS computer system, and then I write up test requirements to test them. The testing team writes up a procedure to test my requirements and those of many others (like for the electrical power system, the thermal system and others). This procedure is a little like a recipe in that it documents every single little step we must do in the order in which they must be done. All this is done very carefully as the Station is a very large and expensive project and we must be sure everything is safe and works just right. The next part of the test will include the U.S. Laboratory Module, the most beautiful and complicated piece of the ISS (in my personal opinion!) The US Lab will house the majority of controlling computers for the Station including those for all the pressurized modules (where the astronauts live and work) as well as for the payloads (science experiments). I think it is the most exciting part of the Station to work with. I found many ideas for testing with the US Lab for the MEIT test. Well, that is what a day in the life of a International Space Station engineer looks like from my perspective! Pretty exciting, huh? I would like think that this may someday be your home that I am working on. The future looks bright for the students of today to be the space explorers and scientists of tomorrow. A strong foundation in science and mathematics will be an important key to getting there, so study hard! STATUS OF COLUMBIA PROCESSING
Below, we provide reports on the processing of Shuttle Columbia taken from the detailed daily reports found at the NASA Shuttle Status web site at http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/status/status.htm. At times 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. Last Tuesday, February 10, Columbia rolled out of OPF bay 3 and into VAB high bay 2 for temporary storage. Shuttle Atlantis will be the next occupant in OPF bay 3 following a week of open bay preparation. Columbia will remain in the VAB until mid-April when Shuttle Discovery rolls out of OPF bay 1. Columbia will then be transferred to OPF bay 1 to complete STS-93's orbiter preparations.
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