NASA Co-Op Week 4: Meeting Martians
NASA Co-Op Week 4: Meeting Martians
Stars from the Martian movie visited Johnson Space Center including Sebastian Stan (who plays an astronaut and was also the Winter Solider in an Avengers Captain America Movie) and Mackenzie Davis (who plays a flight operator in mission control that discovers Mark Watney is alive). Ellen Ochoa the center head hosted a Q&A so Sebastian and Mackenzie could ask astronaut Mike Hopper, a real Mission Control Operator, head of science, and head of engineering Kirk Shireman questions and visa versa. The Martian actors challenged the NASA employees wit asking how they would survive on Mars. Sebastian, who plays an astronaut that has a crush on a fellow space explorer, asked if there was ever crushes on the international space station! I shared with Mackenzie that my role as a Mission Control Co-Op is similar to her character's role in the movie. KHOU a Houston local news station interviewed me about the clash of science at NASA and science fiction in Hollywood.
Here is the full Q&A with Sebastian Stan & Mackenzie Davis from The Martian
Scott Kelly celebrated halfway to a year in space! This year long mission reveals data key to ensuring a longer duration flight to Mars and beyond can be done safely. Data that has been collected includes bone density, muscle mass, eyesight, key organ functions, and effects of radiation. Kelly Skyped down to ground to celebrate with Johnson Space Center.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED Learn about the real martians and NASA's Journey to Mars See how already long duration space flight has effected Scott Kelly Tune into a video series by Time Magazine following the Year Long Mission Subscribe to NASA on YouTube for mission and spacecraft updates Hear producer, astronauts, NASA folk and Author Andy Weir talk about the Martian at Comic-Con Watch The Martian movie coming out October 1st Read The Martian by Andy Weir Intern with NASA | Launch your Aerospace Career | Get Excited about STEM Work for NASA
More Posts from Ourtech and Others
Passionate about space, football & social media? Join NASA Social at NASA's Johnson Space Center on February 1st for a pre Super Bowl LI event. Deadline noon on January 9th: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/go-behind-the-scenes-at-johnson-space-center-leading-up-to-super-bowl-li
Game plan for “Hour Of Code” 2nd Grader Lesson
Hour of code was started to get kids engaged with programming and computer science. Even an hour of dragging and dropping code can open up a new interest and career for kids. This December I will be introducing 2nd Graders to the world of code.
1st we will talk about what they think code is and how it is used. This is a neat video were coders talk about what they have created and how computer science has impacted them.
2nd we will do my favorite group programming activity ever, programming a yeti to dance on MadeWithCode. Students love to take turns dragging and dropping blocks of code, customizing the yeti and choreographing a dance.
3rd we will travel to the computer lab where kids will have free range on coding Minecraft Characters, Flappy Bird Games and Disney movies. Websites I will suggest are...
MadeWithCode, Code.org and Disney
NASA National Community College Aerospace Scholars Fellow interns did an amazing job mentoring NASA's National Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS). They held a panel sharing their NASA stories as NCAS alumni sharing wisdom about treating rejection like an opportunity, achieving excellence over perfection, fundraising no matter what, and following your passion. The NCAS students built autonomous Lego robots that retrieved pieces of rovers from a mock Mars surface. You too can be a part of NCAS Due Early December 2015: https://nas.okstate.edu/ncas/
While adorned in Christmas decorations Mission Control is working fast to instruct astronauts on an unexpected space walk. Year in space astronaut Scott Kelly and newly arrived Tim Kopra are performing an Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) while first time astronaut Tim Peake is declared the commander of Space Station. Kelly and Kopra are assisting in moving the Mobile Transporter rail car a few inches to a worksite on the station’s truss where it can be latched in place. The rail car was stuck and needed to be moved so a Russian ships could be captured this week. In addition they are checking off items from previous EVA Honey Do list. From the perspective of someone who has developed astronaut training, this last minute EVA is extremely impressive! It takes months to develop an EVA's schedule, hours of training in the largest pool in the world with station mock ups - Neutral Buoyancy Lab, and development of hours of training videos. It takes a whole day just to get the suit on! My mentor said who ever pulled this space walk planning off is going to get a big award. WATCH LIVE NOW: www.ustream.tv/NASAHDTV
NASA Co-Op Week 10: Rocket Science Is Hard
I get frustrated with NASA asking “Why don’t we just build a rocket and go?”, looking and sounding like a doofus in a horse head. NASA Johnson and Kennedy interns met up at Cape Canaveral to watch the Atlas V launch. Visiting Kennedy Space Center reminded me about how much goes into a rocket launch, sending humans or satellites into space. Of course budget and the ability to set and maintain ten year plus political space exploration goals would speed up the process. Those variables aside I want to share what goes into a rocket launch.
Fishing For Rockets Surprisingly NASA does indeed reuse rocket parts, I thought this idea was unique to SpaceX but has been in the works for decades. Following shuttle era launches skirts of rockets and other parts were retrieved from the ocean. They would be inspected, refurbished and reused. Shuttle rocket parts will be used on the new Space Launch System (SLS). Signs labeled parts that will be used for the EM-1 Orion launch. Protective materials preventing heat damage often get reapplied to these parts. Parts of the rocket get so hot it reaches 6000 degrees Fahrenheit while others get so cold ice forms. The technology used to mix these epoxies in mid air is the same technology that coats M&Ms and Doritos. Talk about spin off technologies!
Monster Tank So you made rocket parts. Great, but how do you expect to assemble and transport something so huge? This was a problem my robotics team ran into as well. We had to make sure the robot we built would fit through the door. Once you have all the rocket parts they will be assembled in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), the tallest one story building in the world at 526 feet. It takes 45 minutes for the main door to be opened. Clouds have been known to form inside the VAB and rain has fallen too. Despite how big the VAB may be when transporting one of the rockets into an assembly segment it needed to be tilted at a 45 degree angle. Upgrades are currently being made for the massive SLS. Once the rocket is assembled it is transported on the Crawler-transporter moving at a back breaking speed of one mile per hour. This transporter insures the rocket reaches the launch pad safely limiting the movement of rocket to less than a diameter of a basketball.
Blast Off Wave goodbye to your creation because it will soon launch, release its payload, tumble into the sea repeating the cycle. A successful launch is dependent of many variables including launch pad hardware, windspeed, humidity, weather, and simply fishing boats in the line of debris reentry. If launch is a go bolts the size of your lower leg explode freeing the beast from the ground. If the bolts do not successfully release the rocket don’t care, it will continue to lift off and tear its restraints off like King Kong.
WAYS TO GET INVOLVED Consider touring Kennedy Space Center. While Johnson Space is the home of the human aspect of space flight Kennedy is in charge of getting is up there: https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/
Write your congress members and senators encouraging them to support space exploration: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
Discover accomplishments made this week at NASA: http://youtu.be/_a9og3pAqxY
Watch highlights from the latest launch by United Launch Alliance of AtlasV carrying a GPS into orbit: https://www.youtube.com/embed/NPcRziWDigQ
NASA Co-Op Week 2: Beyond Low Earth Orbit
Industrial drive advancing space exploration is juxtaposed by the nature around NASA’s campus. I can stroll past trees, ponds, deer, cranes, turtles on meandering sidewalks which connect Johnson Space Center’s buildings. A couple blocks down I can visit a caged beast that never flew, Saturn V.
Termination of Apollo halted production of many projects and future Moon missions. The Saturn V Rocket was in full functional condition eager to launch and fulfill its duty to send the capsule beyond low earth orbit. Now it’s Houston’s most expensive tourist attraction. During my Co-Op I work towards sending us back beyond low earth orbit again.
My technical work continues with PLUTO (Plug-in Port Utilization Officer) on of the teams in current mission control. Currently I am orchestrating training for crew members. This training will teach astronauts how to use a device that will assist them in conducting labs and procedures in space. I am scheduled to OJT (On the Job Training) at a number of console positions with mission control in the next few weeks. In addition to technical work I have been appointed leader of the PAXC (Pathways Agency Cross-center Connections) committee where Co-Ops and interns communicate with peers at other centers and the Lectures and Tours Committee tasked with exploring the coolest places onsite and arranging lectures with some of NASA’s legends.
Help a fellow NASA Intern send a satellite into space!
Giveaway and Satellite Crowd Funder!
Giveaway/raffle, WIN a FREE telescope! We will select one winner and give away a Celestron 21035 70mm Travel Scope: And help support our effort launch a satellite!
To enter the UGA Small Satellite Research Lab’s giveaway all you have to do is:
Reblog this post (so we can get your name)
Liking the post will enter you a second time!
Following the small sat lab on tumblr will enter you a third time!
Following the small sat lab on twitter will enter your a fourth time (just tweet your us tumblr user name at us and tell us how cool you think space exploration is)!
Help Our Crowdfunded to build a spacecraft! Help us build a spacecraft!
We’re Crowdfunding a satellite! Donate at SmallSat.uga.edu/donate!
We’ll be sending a Satellite to the international Space Station in 2018! We just need help building the ground station!
The Donation Rewards:
If you have donated larger amount you will also get all the benefits of the lesser amounts! Be sure when you visit smallsat.uga.edu/donate that you include your information so that we can get in contact with you!
$5 - You will entered in the telescope raffle 2 more times and will receive a signed thank you card in the mail from the lab!
$10 - You will receive a signed certificate of space exploration from the UGA Small Satellite Research Laboratory
$25 - You will receive a mission patch of your choosing (our NASA patch has yet to be designed but the MOCI patch is below)
$50 - You will receive both mission patches!
$100 - We will give you a UGA Small Satellite Laboratory tee-shirt! Special made for supporters of our campaign!
$250 - We will tweet at you from space! once a month! (or you can control the message that you send!)
$500 - You will receive a plaque commemorating your participation in the development of our spacecraft!
$1000 - We will engrave your name on the side of our satellite!
Remember, you get ALL of the benefits of lower donations if you donate a higher one!
Please Help Us Out! We are partnered with NASA and will be sending a satellite to the International Space Station in 2018, but we do not have the money to build a ground station yet!
We have 2 3U cube satellites! The image below is the patch for our Mapping and Ocean Color Imager (MOCI). We are also building the SPectroscopic Observatory of Coastal regions (SPOC), is this is the satellite that will be launched to the International Space Station!
Donate At: SmallSat.uga.edu/donate!
The Crowdfunded and raffle end on July 31, 2016, after that it will take us 20-30 days to send out all the rewards! Donate at smallsat.uga.edu/donate! Feel free to message us or ask us any space questions you may have!
Donate At: SmallSat.uga.edu/donate!
One of the renderings of our satellite:
Third spacecraft of NASA's New Frontiers Program trilogy, OSIRIS-REx, launches TODAY SEPTEMBER 8TH to collect asteroid samples. Coverage starts at 3:30pmCT with OSIRIS-REx's mission debrief. Launch at 6:05pmCT. OSIRIS-REx will travel to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu & bring a small sample back to Earth for study. Is OSIRISREx the beginning of asteroid mining? Protecting Earth from asteroid collisions? Watch history unfold! www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv
Tech Opportunities: Grace Hopper Day 2
An overwhelming aspect of the Grace Hopper Conference is the career fair and hosted lunches. During which you get to exposed to many career, learning and conference opportunities. I couldn't possibly take advantage of all these opportunities so I will share them with you.
Hour of Code: Everyone
Learn a bit of programming for an hour or longer if you like! Simply projects to get you jump started with programming.
Bank of America Internships: Current Students
Hiring and looking for interns in cyber security, user interface design, software, IT and more.
NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Community: Women in College
Attend conferences, access to exclusive scholarships, exposure to internship opportunities, join a support group of over 2500 like minded women who share a similar passion for computing. A support network where you can connect with others 24/7. There is always someone posting or responding on the Facebook page!
Google & Microsoft Internships: Everyone
At the Grace Hopper Conference Google & Microsoft heavily stressed that they are hiring and recruiting more interns and full time hires. They both offer parental leave meaning both parents get paid leave for many weeks for a child!
Best Buy: Everyone
During the career fair Best Buy was hosting a coding challenge which caught my attention. They displayed medium level code in various languages and you had to determine what it outputs. After completign the challenge they described various engineering, analyst and IT.
Code Camp | Square: College & High School Women
Five day to week long tech immersive camp where you code, practice leadership and complete group engineering projects.
NASA Co-Op and Internship: Current Students
Of course I am going to list NASA opportunities I Co-Op at NASA! Everybody in every discipline can contribute to NASA's mission and humanities goals to advance space exploration. There are current education, fashion design, art, engineering, computer science, and biology majors and more!
These are the first nine opportunities that popped into my head and I will share more as the conference progresses.
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