Holding The NASA Meatball (their Circular Logo). The Red Print NASA Logo Is Called The Worm.
Holding the NASA Meatball (their circular logo). The red print NASA logo is called the worm.
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Accidentally met NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden! (Barely pictured far left.) I was watching the Space Station cargo ship launch (which unfortunately didn't) from the viewing room and all these important people walked in. After the scrub Bolden came up to me and asked who I was. I responded that I was just an intern and we talked about astronaut training and what was on board the ship.
My first NASA internship was at @nasa‘s Glenn Research Center so the news of John Glenn's passing hits hard. Glenn was the 1st American to orbit Earth and 5th human in space. He also served in the Korean War, was one of the "Mercury Seven" (NASA Military test pilot) and was a US Senator from Ohio. Glenn has done tremendous things for the advancement of human spaceflight. Thanks for your service John Glenn!
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Reporting All Robots!
This FIRST Robotics season I joined forces with BlueDevil Press to live report on the Duluth Robotics Regional. BlueDevil Press is a collaboration of three teams to give an unbiased view of the robotics world to the community. As a part project mentor part alumna I helped edit articles, devise interview questions and follow beats. For the Duluth Regional we crafted a wrap around the Duluth News Tribune, submitted four articles to the paper and published eight articles on the BlueDevil Press blog. Some of the stories include...
"Starting ’em Young" - Kindergartners visit the FIRST Robotics Regional
"FIRST President Don Bossi Interview" - FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) President shares he visions for the future of robotics
"Phoenix Robotics" - A norm busting robotics team
"A “FEARless” Season" - Overcoming disaster, robot drove off the stage during community demo
Wrap around the Duluth News Tribune. Part program part “What is robotics?”
Following the competition I visited the Kindergarten class that took a field trip to watch the robots. We reviewed the robotics challenge reveal video one more time, then they were challenged to build a robot of their own out of odd materials. Students were given googly eyes (cameras), clothes pins (robot defense manipulators), pom poms (boulders), foam (robot structure), construction paper (robot field) and pipe cleaners (aluminum rods). I expected the students to glue their creations down on provided construction paper but instead they made the robots 3-D! Folding and building their robots like a diorama recreating the scenes they saw at the competition. Every time I give a class a design challenge I am amazed by what they imagine!
Robot shooting a boulder into a tower.
WAYS TO GET INVOLVED
Watch FIRST robotics competitions live every Thursday to Saturday until May 1st, 2016.
Support your local FIRST Robotics team. Teams often have their own website and 501c3 so you can donate to them. Find them here.
Visit a classroom and read a book, teach some coding, talk about your career. Teachers will love the extra prep time and students love a fresh perspective.
Pit area where teams work on their robot between matches.
Just got my planet stamps from the US Postal Office today for some summer letter writing. They are beautiful!
Space Stamps
Coming in to a post office near you: new “Views of Our Planets: Forever stamps featuring iconic images of the planets in our solar system, including the well-known “Blue Marble” photo of Earth.
New “Pluto Explored” Forever stamps commemorating the July 2015 flyby of Pluto by our New Horizons spacecraft are also being issued for online purchase.
The May 31 first-day-of-issue dedication ceremony for the Pluto and planetary stamps will be in New York City at the World Stamp Show. This international gathering of stamp collectors occurs only once each decade in the United States, and – with more than 250,000 visitors expected to attend – is the largest stamp show in the world.
The Pluto stamps are of special significance to the New Horizons team, which placed a 20-cent 1991 “Pluto: Not Yet Explored” stamp on board the spacecraft. On July 14, 2015, New Horizons carried the stamp on its history-making journey to Pluto and beyond, as jubilant members of the mission team celebrated with a large print, striking the words “not yet.”
The above pane of 16 Forever stamps, the Postal Service showcases some of the more visually compelling historic, full-disk images of the planets obtained during the last half-centruy of our space exploration. Eight new colorful Forever stamps – each shown twice – feature Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
This isn’t the first time that space has been featured on postal stamps. In the past, many different space images and missions have been highlighted on the tiny pieces of paper you stick on the corner of your mail.
Here’s a look at a few space stamps of the past:
Nebulae
Stamps depicting multiple nebulae seen by the Hubble Space Telescope were released in 2000.
Pioneer 10
Launched in 1972, Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt and obtain close-ups of Jupiter
U.S. Launches Satellites
This stamp, released in 1999, depicts the post World War II race in space exploration.
Alan Shepard: First American in Space
This stamp, released in 2011, featured Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Flying on the Mercury spacecraft, Shepard launched, flew 116 miles high and came back to Earth. His flight lasted about 15 and a half minutes.
MESSENGER Mission
MESSENGER, launching in 2004, was the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury. This stamp, released in 2011, highlighted this mission and its importance. Understanding Mercury and how it formed is critical to better understanding the conditions on and evolution of the inner planets.
The new “Views of our Planets” stamps will be widely available across the U.S. at post offices and for online purchase beginning May 31. The Pluto – Explored Forever stamps will only be sold online or by calling 800-782-6724.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
I had the awesome opportunity to have coffee with Johnson Space Center (JSC) Director Ellen Ochoa and Deputy Director Mark Geyer. Above I am pictured to the left of Ochoa in a red blazer and I look pretty serious writing notes. JSC leaders have been striving to hear voices from employees up high, in the trenches, wise, and new. Recently JSC Center and Deputy Directors have hosted coffees to share their goals for JSC and listen to concerns. Ochoa and Geyer shared their vision of JSC 2.016, how NASA can do more with less resources and deliver what is expected and beyond on current missions. Out of all NASA contractors and civil servants I was randomly selected to share my perspective and concerns as a Co-Op.
JSC 2.016
It's no secret that NASA's budget is far less than it was during the Apollo Era. NASA's budget was over 4% of the federal budget during the Space Race to the Moon and now below 1% despite NASA's goals to journey to Mars. Keeping realistic in funds and resources JSC 2.016 is a mantra adopted by NASA employees to do more with the resources they have. At the coffee Ochoa shared that the goals of JSC 2.016 is to ensure our work is pushing forward NASA's current missions, enabling change by listening to and adopting new ideas, removing obstacles that hinder progress, and share NASA's missions with communities.
Concerns
Before attending the coffee I polled JSC interns and Co-Ops to see if they had concerns and questions to share. Within moments of the coffee starting Ochoa and Geyer shared essential insights on how NASA’s mission is evolving in a five, ten and beyond year sense - it was very Carl Sagan Cosmos-esk. Once I was brought to this level of long-term thinking my key concern broadened from specifics. During my opportunity to talk I mentioned the concern about the vagueness of the Journey to Mars mission compared to the solidity of Space Launch System, Orion, Space Station and Commercial Crew missions. I was surprised to hear that fluidity of our Journey to Mars is actually intended. Discoveries and knowledge from Space Launch System, Orion, Space Station and Commercial Crew missions are necessary before solidifying the Journey to Mars. During those missions we will collect a lot of data on the vehicles that will be carrying our astronauts, learn new things we didn’t plan to learn and test the waters with deep space collaboration with private industries and international partners. Fluidity is the nature of NASA’s long-term impact on humanity which is unique to all other forces in the world advocating for short term instant gratification (short term can even mean one year, eight years and even decades compared to humanity as a whole). NASA must deliver what is expected of us and beyond on these current solid missions to ensure more solidified Mars related mission in the future.
We Still Need NASA
With all the SpaceX, Lockheed Martin and general private space industry hype some may have the impression that we no longer need NASA for space exploration. Articles titled "U.S. government should fund private space companies, not NASA" paint false claims of competition between government space missions and private industry. During this coffee this misconception of competition was expunged and I was re-energized about why we still need NASA. NASA, as a subset of the US Government, awards contracts to private space companies that would otherwise not be able to pursue these aerospace endeavors because they do not bring in a profit. The government can risk to make these long-term investments without certainty of short-term instant gratification like profit. There is a tendency to forget that NASA has been contracting work to private companies since the 1960s. Grumman Aircraft was contracted to build the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) in 1962. Being a government agency, NASA can foster a unique relationship between other countries space agencies such as ROSCOSMOS, JAXA and ESA. Through decades NASA is the government agency that has lead the cohesiveness and steady beat of the drum of space exploration progress.
Space Launch System (SLS) booster test screen shots from today. This booster uses 5.5 tons of propellent a second! The booster will help sling shot an unmanned Orion Space Craft around the Moon in late 2018. In mid July I will going to a SLS engine test in person.
NASA Co-Op Week 5: NASA After Hours
Surprisingly NASA, like college, has a plethora of "extra-curriculars" including intramural sports and committees. Interns at Johnson Space Center (JSC) are uniquely involved in extracurriculars. JSC interns hold weekly meetings. Twice a month PIPE, a professional social group meets and SCuM, a social social group. PIPE hosts committees like professional development, social media (managing NASA Twitter & Facebook accounts), PAXC (Pathways Agencies Cross Center Connection), and Tours & Lectures. SCum hosts committees like Sports, Intern Video, Fancy Dinner, and Skydiving (an intern tradition).
I am currently the lead of Tours/Lectures. A group of us arrange tours at neat locations around JSC like flying a T38 jet trainer, the largest pool in the world where astronauts and Robonaut lab. Lectures are also arranged by the group including Anne Roemer, head of the Astronaut Selection Committee, Ginger Kerrick, Assistant Director for the International Space Station, and Everett Gibson, Moon Rock Expert.
PAXC is a group that unites all the NASA Centers. Every other week we video conference with all the other centers! Glenn in Ohio, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Langley in Virginia. We get to hear about what the other centers are working on, lectures from their center leaders and dream about touring each other's centers.
Hacking into a lawnmower robot is another activity I take part in. We are converting an autonomous navigating lawn mowing robot into a tele-operated human controlled robot. This requires taping into the robots controls and adding wireless communication between the robot and controller. Using an Adruino controller we can send signals to the robot so we have been learning how to use it.
WAYS TO GET INVOLVED
Learn about some the lecturers we will be hearing from: Anne Reomer, Ginger Kerrick & Everett Gibson
Watch what NASA is doing to enhance the mission to Mars
Start your career with NASA and tune into a Virtual Career Fair and hear about internship, fellowships and scholarships October 8th 12pm-3:30pmCT
NASA Co-Op Week 16: Barf Lab & Mockups
Twenty five weeks at NASA Johnson I finally got a proper tour, lead by a tour guide, of the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility that houses exact replicas (build with same blueprint) of International Space Station modules, Shuttle, and Soyuz. Astronauts train in these mockups. A "low definition" mockup of Orion was present too.
Neurosciences Laboratory took us on a tour of their various astronaut barf machines. It is really like the rumors of spinning chairs, dizzying treadmills, and dark enclosed sliding contraptions. The spinning is to isolate parts of your brain that are used for balance. Only one day after Space Station astronauts return to Earth in Russia they are flown over to Johnson Space Center and put through a series of gravity adaptation tests. They had to pick up weighted objects, navigate around obstacles, jump of a short platform, and exit a hatch like structure. These tests will help NASA determine if astronauts would be capable of completing Mars surface operations after a long low gravity flight to the Red Planet. I wouldn't be surprised if returning astronauts Kjell, Oleg and Kimiya are on their way to the barf lab right now!
Most of the NASA Johnson Co-Ops and Interns complete their Fall semester this week. It is absolutely heart breaking to get to know so many space passionate people only to have to say goodbye at the end of the semester. I wish I could see all of these stellar students participate in NASA's future as they have already contributed to the growth of space exploration. It was an honor to work among these bright minds.
WAYS TO GET INVOLVED
Accomplishments this week at NASA: https://youtu.be/4tw5uwHD0PEApply for a NASA Internship NOW (high school to grad school):https://intern.nasa.gov/ossi/web/public/main/Apply for a NASA Co-Op (Pathways Internship):http://nasajobs.nasa.gov/studentopps/employment/opportunities.htmLearn to code: https://hourofcode.com/usMeteor Shower live chat December 13th: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2015/M15-180.htmlCurrent NASA opportunities for students: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/current-opps-index.htmlCode more: https://www.madewithcode.com/
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