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S P A C E T E A M O N L I N E
UPDATE # 78 - April 12, 1999
PART 1: Space day is coming!
PART 2: Upcoming Live Events
PART 3: Female Frontiers Puzzle
PART 4: Responding to your needs
PART 5: Preparing for travel to Mars
PART 6: Status of Columbia processing
PART 7: Subscribing & unsubscribing: how to
do it!
SPACE DAY IS COMING!
Mark your calendars: May 6 is Space Day this year. What could be more
appropriate to Space Team Online than a celebration of Space Day. I want
to encourage classrooms to participate in some activity surrounding this
day. There is a listing of some events happening nationwide at:
http://www.spaceday.com/press/events.htm
Here at NASA Quest we are planning some special chats. Space Team Online
and Female frontiers are proud to present a chat with new member Laura
Hoppe. Watch the growing schedule of events at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/common/events/
Coming online late this week will be a whole series of activities and
lesson plans surrounding the Female Frontiers project. I was delighted
last week as I leafed through the pages that are ready and realized that
these lessons can be dynamic tools that will be usable long after women
shuttle commanders are commonplace. They deal with science, history, math,
establishing goals, and a whole lot more. I can't think of a classroom
that couldn't incorporate some part. So summer school teachers, stand by!
These materials may make your planning simpler.
Early next week I will be traveling to Kennedy Space Center to scout out
some of the details for the July, STS-93 launch, so please be patient if
the expected STO Update doesn't hit the presses right on cue. The positive
side is that the timing is great. I'll get to help out with the April 22
Behind the Scenes webcast. See you there?
I hope so,
Linda
UPCOMING LIVE EVENTS:
QuestChats require pre-registration.
->Thursday, April 15, 1999, 9 a.m. PDT (12 noon EST)
Debra Reiss-Bubenheim is project manager and scientist for the Life
Sciences
Division and is working on an experiment scheduled to fly on the upcoming
STS-93 mission. The project will focus on how microgravity affects how the
brain develops and communicates with muscles in the body. Read her profile at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/reiss.html
Registration for this chat will begin on April 1 at
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/chats
->Monday, April 19, 1999, 7 a.m. PDT (10 a.m. EST)
Andrew Petro is part of a team involved with planning future projects and
designing spacecraft for returning to the moon and going on to Mars. His
team also works on improvements to space shuttles and designs for
launchers that will eventually replace the shuttles. Read Andrew Petro's
profile and field journals at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/petro.html
Register at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/chats
->Wednesday, April 21, 1999, 11 a.m. PDT ( 2 p.m. EST)
Joe Delai works in the Space Station Hardware Integration Office (SSHIO)
on the Space Lab Pallet. He works with other engineers on the development
of the International Space Station. Joe wears many hats in his job and
has joined us live in the Behind the Scenes series. Read Joe's profile at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/petro.html
Register at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/chats
->Thursday, April 22, 10:00 a.m. PDT (1 pm EST)
ISS-Behind the Scenes: Join us for the continuing series of broadcasts
from the Kennedy Space Center ISS program. This month, Mike Ciannilli
takes
us Inside the Vertical Assembly Building, which at this moment houses
Columbia (the STS-93 shuttle)! See:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ltc/sto/iss
->Tuesday, April 27, 1999, 10 AM PDT (1 PM EST)
Dale Lueck is the design engineering lead. For the past twenty-five years,
Dale has been involved with designing
instruments for chemical analysis and process control. Recently, he was
assigned as the design engineering lead for the Analytical Instrumentation
Control Group at Kennedy Space Center. See his profile at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/lueck.html
and his latest journal below! Registration for this chat will begin on
April 13.
->Thursday, April 29, 1999, 10 AM PDT (1 PM EST)
Dionne Jackson is responsible for testing and identifying metal alloys
that are used as flight hardware and in supporting equipment and
structures. Read her profile at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/jackson.html
Registration for this chat will begin on April 15.
-Thursday, May 6, 1999: Space Day:
->8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. PDT Laura Hoppe, First female INCO Flight
Controller. See her online profile at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/hoppe.html or
To register, see Female Frontiers schedule:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/frontiers/schedule.html
->Tuesday, May 11, 1999,10:00 a.m. PDT (1:00 p.m. EST)
Meet your Student Ambassadors who will represent you at the launch of
STS-93. This Webcast will also serve as an optimum time to test your
technologies so you are ready for the live events from Kennedy Space
Center in July! Event Page is located at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ltc/sto/frontiers/ambass.html
->Wednesday, May 19, 1999, 10:00 a.m. PDT (1:00 p.m. EST)
Tour of the ISS Mockup and Training Facility at JSC
Join us for our regularly scheduled guided tour of the International Space
Station mockup and training facility at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in
Houston, Texas. Information on this event may be found at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ltc/sto/tours
For continuing Female Frontiers schedule see:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/frontiers/schedule.html
For April Space Team Online chats see:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/chats
FEMALE FRONTIERS PUZZLE
The online version is at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/events/ffpuzzle
Question #5: Answers due by Wednesday, April 28, 1999
What do the objects on STS-93's mission patch symbolize?
-------
Question #4: Answers due by Wednesday, April 21, 1999
Astronaut Catherine Coleman is the other woman astronaut on STS-93. What
is her nickname? Which previous mission(s) was she on and what "team" was
she in?
-------
Question #3: Answers due by Wednesday, April 14, 1999
Fill in the blanks:
Chandra will try to "target the age of the universe".
By combining Chandra's data and Drs. John Carlstrom and Marshall Joy's
radio interferometers, they will try "to probe tiny fluctuations in the
____________." (also can be put as this 4 letter acronym _____)
-------
Send your answers to Student Ambassador Stephanie Wong:
wongtong@connect.ab.ca
Check your personal score at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/events/ffpuzzle/scoring.html
-------
Answer to Question 2: Why was there a delay in the shipping of the
Chandra Observatory to KSC that caused the launched to be postponed to
July?
Excerpt from NASA press release, dated January 20, 1999 and online in your
Space Team Online Press release archive:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/news/press.html
"The postponement will allow TRW to evaluate and correct a potential
problem with several printed circuit boards in the observatory's command
and data management system.
"NASA has directed TRW to remove and replace the boards in the main unit
and to conduct further tests and evaluation to determine if it is also
necessary to replace the boards in the remote units. The repair, if
limited to boards in the main command and telemetry unit, is expected to
delay shipment to Kennedy by approximately one week. This will result in
approximately a five-week slip in the observatory's launch readiness date,
which will allow for integration and testing of the units at Kennedy."
RESPONDING TO YOUR NEEDS
Continuing to respond to our latest survey requests and suggestions for
improvement:
* better screening of "time-wasters" in the Q&A area.
This is part of a three-fold request (and if the author is reading, I have
forwarded the other two requests to the manager of our software system to
see what he can do) and a good opportunity to give you some insight into
perspective of a "smart filter" and/or the "expert" since it came from
one.
For those who are not acquainted with our Question and Answer section, we
have developed NASA Quest's own system to provide the public with expert
answers to their questions without overtaxing the time of any of our
featured STO Team members. We do that with the help of a corps of
volunteers, called Smart Filters, who receive the questions, try to
determine if the question has been asked before, and if not, forward it to
the appropriate expert to be answered. The process has served us
efficiently, though not flawlessly. We do continuously try to find ways to
improve it.
The above remark about time-wasters is an issue that periodically bears
revisiting. Online, there is a really long page devoted to trying to save
our NASA expert's time by not asking questions that have been asked before
or that are easily answered from another source. It's at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/ask/question.html
I know it's a pain to read through the whole page on how to ask a good
question and to look through the previously asked questions to be sure
you've come up with an unique one, but we don't want to lose the
enthusiasm of our volunteer smart filters or our experts to respond by
repeating or asking really trivial questions.
One of the exciting things about our work at NASA Quest is that we are in
touch with the folks who are at the cutting edge of science and
technology. They know the answers to things that didn't exist at the last
printing of your latest encyclopaedia and are willing to share some of
that with us. That leaves a lot of room for some very exciting questions,
don't you think?
[Editor's note: Dale Lueck will be chatting with us on April 27. Be sure
to read in this journal about the new responsibilities he's taken on and
then join him live online. See schedule above]
PREPARING FOR TRAVEL TO MARS
by Dale Lueck
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/lueck.html
Interviewer: Brandt Secosh
March 15, 1999
A lot of changes have happened since Dale Lueck's last journal on
the (NOx) scrubber to fertilizer project. Dale has been appointed
as Lead Engineer for the Analytical Systems Division at Kennedy
Space Center. Dale points out that this description is better suited
for what his lab does - analysis! Anything that has the description
of "research" now goes through his office. Most of the previous
projects were converted to performance-based projects and are
being executed by the support contractor. In these contracts, the
contractor is given full responsibility for completing the contract
to a specified deliverable product and completion date. They are
required to perform to the contract specifications and are judged
on their ability to meet the deadlines and specifications without
direct NASA technical oversight.
The last time I interviewed Dale he expressed a deep interest in
getting involved with any projects that involved future space
flights to Mars. Well, that has happened! One of Dale's projects
will be the In Situ Propellant Production project (ISPP). Dale
recently returned from Colorado where he met with Robert
Zubrin, author of the book The Case for Mars, and several other
persons involved with this project.
So what is the ISPP? The ISPP, in its most basic element, is a
fuel production station that is deployed to the red planet far in
advance of any manned flights from Earth. It is not feasible to
carry all of the fuel on a space craft that is necessary to make the
six-month journey from Earth to Mars and the six month journey
back from Mars to Earth. Transporting this amount of fuel would
lose a lot of valuable cargo (payload) space. Instead, the
spacecraft that will eventually make the trip to Mars will only have
to bring hydrogen. All of the other propellant elements will be
extracted from the Martian atmosphere by the ISPP. CO2 will be
acquired from the Martian atmosphere in a Sabatier reactor to
produce methane and water. The methane produced by this
process is drawn off and liquefied, while the water is condensed
and sent to an electrolysis unit to be split into hydrogen and
oxygen. The oxygen produced by the electrolysis unit is
liquefied, and the hydrogen is fed back into the Sabatier reactor.
The technology required to accomplish this cycle has been in use
on Earth for over a century. However, although the technologies
have long been used, putting all of them in a cycle to make a
complete system of the type described has never been done.
There are many considerations that will have to be given to this
project. The ISPP will be launched from Earth to begin its
eight-month journey to Mars. Upon arrival in the Martian
atmosphere, it will have to decelerate and land. Once that is
complete, the unit will have to self deploy and begin producing
fuel. Once the fuel cells are full, a signal will be sent back to Earth
letting us know that the ISPP has completed its mission. That
mission is expected to take up to 500 days to be complete. All of
this will take place in a very harsh Martian atmosphere that is
known to have extreme temperature fluctuations, dust storms that
can block out any sunlight for months at a time, and high levels of
radiation. For a view of the Martian surface, click here:
http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/mars/ops/Nov97.html
When I first heard that some people at Kennedy Space Center
might get the chance to work on the design of the ISPP
equipment, I thought, nothing I am planning to do would be as
important or interesting as that! I asked about the chances of
working on the project in some capacity, and soon they were
asking me for some help on the chemical questions involved in
the project. It was last April when I first got some information on
the project from JPL. I took the printout of a 100-page report with
me to my Jury Duty appointment that next day and read most of it
while I was waiting to be interviewed by the judge. I actually
came up with a couple of ideas at that time, and we have been able
to integrate them into proposals that have just been partially
funded for work to begin. My original hope to have a small part
in this work has grown to a much larger technical oversight role
for the KSC effort in building and doing research on an entire
ISPP test bed. This will be a challenging and interesting project.
Let the work begin!!
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.
Columbia is jacked and leveled in VAB high bay 2 undergoing routine system
observation during a temporary storage period. 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 (Orbiter Processing Facility) bay
1 to complete STS-93's orbiter pre-launch preparations.
Don't miss our peek inside the VAB on April 22 - Mike will share his visit
with Columbia-in-storage - see the schedule above!
SUBSCRIBING & UNSUBSCRIBING: HOW TO DO IT!
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