Tech Opportunities: Grace Hopper Day 2

The world has lost a hero, Eugene Cernan, the last man on the Moon. Commanded Apollo 17, drove the Moon buggy & collected critical lunar samples. Prior to Apollo 17 he was a Captain in the U.S. Navy, Piloted Gemini 9 and piloted the lunar module on the Apollo 10 mission. Post NASA Cernan conducted outreach to students to inspire a new generation of space explorers. This is how I want to remember hero and last man on the Moon Eugene Cernan:

Gene singing on the Moon

Apollo 17 Crew

Apollo 17 Lunar Site

Ideas for Teachers: Programming Lesson Plan 

When I return back to my hometown I will be visiting schools to share about my NASA experience and teach programming. I will be sharing my lesson plans here for a day of programming and a day of space related learning. Let’s start with programming. One of my first stops will be my Mom’s Kindergarten class so you will notice my lesson plan is catered for elementary students.

Morning: What is programming?

After your usual morning activities; “G-O-O-D M-O-R-N-I-N-G Good Morning Aye Aye Good Morning *clap* *clap”, drawing sticks and telling about your weekend, introduce students to the concept of programming. Ask students, “What do you think programming is?” Write down the answers on the white board. After answer along the lines of “Programming is telling a computer to do things - make a video game, control a robot, create an App, and more!” Next I would show them a short video with our current stars in technology.

Lets Start Coding

“Enough talk about programming let’s do it!” A great introduction to coding is a Made With Code project. The Yeti project is my favorite of these activities. Students take turns dragging and dropping blocks of code assigning attributes to the Yeti fur color and feet size. After assigning attributes the students can watch the Yeti dance. When I have had students write yeti code they enjoy changing the colors and dance many times!

Afternoon: Code Related Rotations

Skills needed to program are not only found in front of a screen but working in a team, time for activity rotations. (These will be the centers I will have but you all can have different ones.) At one center I will have my LEGO robot for the students to program. There will be objects that the robot can pick up or avoid. At the second center 3D printed puzzles will be available for students to solve. At the third center an activity with half a blank page and half a lined page. Students can draw a picture of what they think would be cool to program and write about it. Last center create a robot out of construction paper, foil, or other mediums.

Now You Try

Take a trip to the computer lab and let students try to program on their own. Hour of Code is a great resource where students can learn programming at various levels. Two activities I tested out an enjoyed was a Flappy Bird Game Creator and Star Wars Drone Game. Students can code on their own or work in a group to help each other figure things out.

Have fun teaching students about programming! In the future I hope to get a Sphero, 3D printer, and Arduino type kit. Maybe you all have other ideas for a programming lesson plan.

Teams watch robots compete at a FIRST Robotics Regional in Minnesota

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

100 Million X-Rays: NASA Co-Op #2 Week Three & Four

Jupiter orbital insertion, FIRST robotics coach visit and humidity sensor test prep have filled these past two weeks.

Drafting a fluid schematic complete with themocouples and pressure gauges I learn some fluid dynamics not expected to acquire as an electrical engineering and computer science major. The humidity sensor will be tested three ways - for 0% humidity with evaporating liquid nitrogen (Yah!), for ~ 50% with ambient room humidity down here in Houston, and >50% with ambient air being pulled through a water filled bubbler. Sensors will systemically be scattered to collect data and determine with a hefty amount of PV=NRTing if the humidity sensor works. After learning PV=NRT can only be used when you are certain the amount of water and vapor are equal to derive humidity we came up with the simple three part test matrix explained above.

My high school FIRST Robotics coach came to Johnson Space to tour some spacefaring robots, propulsion test center and space station mock ups (exact replicas of what is in space) at the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility! We also visited Houston’s Natural Science Museum and biked on Galveston.

Within a second of what was expected the Juno Spacecraft performed her tasks successfully and inserted into Jupiter’s orbit. This basketball court sized spacecraft will be exposed radiation equivalent to a human receiving 100 million X-Rays in a year. Juno also captured the first demonstration of celestial harmonic movement hypothesized by physics. Powered by solar energy this Juno is unique because most crafts that travel this far are radioisotope thermoelectrically powered. A critical part of this insertion was turning the solar arrays back toward the Sun post insertion.

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

Watch…

Juno Media Briefing: https://youtu.be/I6uUEYOzipw

Juno Insertion: https://youtu.be/zfIqnpqPFbI

Juno Post Insertion Media Briefing: https://youtu.be/LH_uPWU5V3o

Apply for a NASA Internship: https://intern.nasa.gov/ossi/web/public/guest/searchOpps/

Apply for a NASA Co-Op (check back as it is updated as soon as one opens): http://nasajobs.nasa.gov/studentopps/employment/opportunities.htm  

Looking Forward to Leadership Conference NCCWSL

Following Memorial Day I will be traveling to DC for NCCWSL, National Conference for College Women Student Leaders, by AAUW (American Association of University Women). AAUW Duluth chapter has given me the awesome opportunity to meet students from around America, represent my engineering discipline and refine my leadership skills.

While Co-Oping at NASA I learned what categories of leadership they look for when hiring branch chiefs, flight directors and even center directors. NASA looks for individuals that can Lead Change, Lead People, are Results Driven, have Business Acumen, can Build Teams and have Discipline Competency. Our center director, Ellen Ochoa, has all of these leadership skills. A leader in a lower position may not have to have business acumen or have weaknesses in two of these categories. With leadership skills identified I have chosen what workshops I should attend...

I Get Knocked Down, but I Get Up Again: Persevering through Life’s Challenges

The Human Side of Collaboration

Be Better: Enhanced Speaking Skills for Women

...including keynote speakers and a trip downtown to learn about advocacy, politics, and policy making from a panel of women who work for senators and representatives on Capitol Hill. I am avoiding sessions that could be replaced by a TEDTalk and sessions presented by business folks that may be there simply to pitch their company - these are all disappointments I have experienced in past conferences.

I am half surprised and half not surprised about how politically charged some of these workshops and lectures are (NCCWSL is hosted in our nation's capitol after all and AAUW uses policy to advance equality). Many leaders in industry do not interface with politics on a daily basis so I hope there is enough relevant content that will truly challenge my understanding of leadership. I want brutal honesty on how I can improve and tools that I can use in industry. I will attend with an open mind.

When I visited the White House in 2013 for a tech related Champions of Change event I advocated for project based learning in schools - reducing standardize testing and implementing measurable projects mirroring challenges in "the real world". During this excursion my primary message will about continuing and growing Earth observation missions. For a final spring semester I wrote about how crucial Earth observation missions are to our environment, safety and economy. I will be sure to post an abridged version here soon. While Earth observation is my primary message I will be sure to also talk about the importance of the "A" in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math), how trade schools are critical to American jobs and manufacturing and last project based learning again.

I will be live blogging during the conference so subscribe via email to get the latest blog posts and follow me on Twitter @KirsiCootie!

Mars Dust into Thrust: NASA Co-Op #2 Week One

You would think pursuing a double major in electrical engineering and computer science would provide enough breadth to remain confident at a Co-Op... wrong. As I start my second Co-Op tour at NASA Johnson's Propulsion & Energy Conversion team I am finding that the more you learn the less you know. This summer I will be LabVIEW programming for In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) a system that turns Mars dust into fuel. ISRU is a rover payload that takes in mars atmosphere and soil and turns it into liquid methane and oxygen (fuel options). Other capabilities is getting O2 to breathe and excavating drinkable water. One of my projects is to control with a National Instruments compact cRIO an oxygen liquefier and a new water concentration sensor. The sensor I am testing uses spectroscopy to eliminate sensor erosion from corrosive Mars materials. These tasks are very chemical engineering heavy which require understanding a system and how to control it safely. I am excited to tackle this learning curve, understand more about Mars mission energy systems, and become more comfortable with chemical engineering concepts. WAYS TO GET INVOLVED Watch what NASA is up to: https://youtu.be/p_snvjghMJg Learn how to program with LabVIEW: https://youtu.be/IOkoyuikj5Q?list=PLdNp0fxltzmPvvK_yjX-XyYgfVW8WK4tu Read about our journey to Mars: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/journeytomars/index.html ISRU in more depth: https://youtu.be/M3HbD1S_H5U

Olaf Image from film: Frozen. Dir. Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee Lee. Prod. Peter Del Vecho. Perf. Kristen Bell,

Successful Potato Challenge and Minnesota Give to the Max day fundraising for student space camp scholarships. After 24 hours of potatoes, over $10,000 was raised reaching the goal to receive an additional $10,000 donation match! Wow, that's a lot of education! Learn more about The Mars Generation who kicked off this effort: http://themarsgeneration.org

Dragon & Tech Development: NASA Co-Op #3 Week 5 & 6

Six weeks into my spring at NASA I can finally summarize my role. I am basically a project manager. I am working with a wonderful team of developers and flight controllers to green light an app astronauts may use on the International Space Station to facilitate stowage operations. The app runs on a device that would make stowage operations more hands free and enable monitoring from Earth. Stowage operations include unloading visiting vehicles such as the SpaceX Dragon and reloading Japanese HTV vehicles to burn up in the atmosphere. To get app approval I need to set up user tests in space station node mock-ups with participants familiar with space station procedures such as mission control flight controllers and astronauts. I observe user testing for other stowage tools and instruct team members to integrate those lessons learned into the app. I make sure the right talents are involved in the development including folks who work in human factors and those who train astronauts. So far this has been my favorite work tour responsibility wise. Even as a Co-Op my efforts directly correlate with the success of the app’s progress.

Picture above is from NASA’s exhibits in downtown Houston during Super Bowl week. I am wearing a VR headset that gave a 360 degree view of how rocket engines are constructed. A rocket booster of the same module of those on the Space Launch System was perched in the middle of Houston’s Discovery Green. Standing in the middle of the exhibits you could spin around in the circle and see sky scrapers draped in Super Bowl LI banners.

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

SpaceX Dragon, a cargo resupply ship is scheduled to launch Sat Feb 18 9:01amCT, watch here!

Science experiments arriving to Space Station on Dragon to be conducted bu astronauts!

Behind the scenes of the SpaceX Dragon launch and Space Food!  

List of launches scheduled at Kennedy Space Center in Florida's Cape Canaveral.

Five minute video of this week's NASA accomplishments.

Real time updates on  NASA's missions.

Apply to be a NASA Intern!