NASA Co-Op Week 11: Leaky Space Station

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! 

(via GIPHY)

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

SPACE WALK 7:10am CT tomorrow October 28 on NASA TV UStream: https://t.co/VMWu4QWWf7 Astronaut Kjell & Scott Kelly will be floating outside the International Space Station (ISS) doing stuff. Probably fixing things because poor ISS is almost 15 years old. If you think about how old a dog is when it's 15 that's basically like ISS. Photo by NASA

STEAMworks: Robotics Game Theories

Teaser trailer for the 2017 FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition for Science and Technology) Robotics Competition was released late September revealing a Steampunk theme. Now is the time for my annual game conspiracy post about what I think teams can expect based on nuanced clues and veteran FIRST experience.

FLYING MINI BOTS - "Prepare to take flight!" was the closing statement of the 2017 FIRST STEAMworks Teaser video. Could minibots be coming back with quadcopter features? Minibots was a successful and entertaining aspect of the 2011 FIRST challenge Logo Motion. At the end of the Logo Motion teams' primary 120lb robot deployed smaller minibots to climb a tower. A FIRST inspired robotics competition, Collegiate Aerial Robotics Demonstration (CARD), launched at the 2011 World Championship with the hope to start a College-Level FIRST competition. According to CARD's Wikipedia page the competitions were held between 2011 and 2013. In the teaser video the flying contraptions illustrated have circular quadcopter like rioters. With the growing interest in quadcopters, drones and other flying robots it would be easier FIRST to suppliers for teams' Kit Of Parts and easier to find mentoring help from college students and companies than years prior.  

STEAM (Science Technology Engineering ART and Math) - Within the past decade educators and professionals have realized that the arts do indeed belong in STEM education. FIRST appears to be adopting the trend by imagining STEAMworks. Even a paint brush is visible in the STEAMworks game logo. What would life be without music and art? (My father is a high school art teacher and both of my parents and myself play stringed instruments). The Beautility factor or engineering, when something is aesthetic while serving a purpose, is due to the blend of STEAM disciplines. FIRST could include arts in the 2017 season by adding a Beautility award, challenging teams to combine their brand with the game's theme, continue the team website competition and add scholarships to their ~200 already offered that include students in the arts.

PNEUMATICS - It would be disappointing if STEAMworks did not emphasize the use of pneumatic devices. Although water is a component that makes steam happen a water game does not seem feasible... I'm imagining teams trying to isolate electronics from water reservoirs... don't get your hopes up. Likely, FIRST will require teams to have at least one pneumatic device. In past seasons pneumatics have been used for championship winning actuators but primarily underutilized. In the teaser trailer a gauge showing 40psi was visible, a possible operating pressure for Kit of Parts pneumatics parts (that est. 1989 is the year Dean Kamen Founded FIRST).

Hopefully these theories get you excited about the upcoming season!

Kick Off Saturday, January 7, 2017 at 9:00 amCT, will update with broadcast link before 1/9/17.

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

Find a local team to help.

Mentor a team.

Check out my past robotics team.

Attending a DC leadership conference in May! 

I will meet US college student leaders, participate in workshops & visit Capitol Hill. One of activity reads, "[Learn about]... advocacy, politics, and policy making from a panel of women who work for senators and representatives on Capitol Hill". Summer of 2013 I attended President Obama's Champions of Change White House event with NCWIT Aspirations in Computing sharing the importance of "project based learning" in schools. I talked with policy makers, company leaders and educators about how project based learning could be implemented and assessed. Additionally, I met Minnesota Senator Al Franken who since has visited FIRST robotics teams in my hometown & supported STEAM heavily. Again I want to have a focused message to share during my DC mission. I may keep the project based learning theme or pick a new one. I would love to hear your thoughts about what message I should share! Who knows who I'll run into!

I am so thankful AAUW Duluth MN awarded me with a scholarship making it possible to attend the AAUW's National Conference for College Women Student Leaders. Here is the agenda of the conference: https://www.nccwsl.org/about/agenda/

Watch for live blogging! Pictures are from my 2013 White House experience.

Week 1 of NASA Co-Op Tour #4 You know it's going to be a good semester when the first person you recognize in the badging office is former NASA Administrator and astronaut Charles Bolden, No matter who you are, NASA's security doesn't falter. I am guessing Bolden was stopping by to check up on Johnson post Hurricane Harvey. Schedules are undeniably out of wack following Harvey. Nonessential astronaut training was rescheduled and "Lessons Learned" meetings are being added to calendars. The International Space Station (ISS) still flew and flight controllers still manned mission control despite the storm.

I am Co-Oping with OSO (Operations Support Officer) pronounced "Oh So", a console in mission control. OSO is responsible for ISS hardware maintenance and ISS hardware training. Engineers in the Mission Evaluation Room (MER), pronounced like "myrrh", brainstorm what on space hardware needs to be repaired. OSO brainstorms how the hardware can be repaired with limited resources safely in low gravity. OSO also provides ample training to new astronauts in preparations for missions. Similar to the other mission control teams I Co-Oped with, OSO has their own console and sits in mission control center. On console OSO is most active when a visiting vehicle docks with ISS, when maintenance is being preformed, and if something off-nominal happens. I will be completing twelve little projects that give me a sampling of the training and maintenance side of OSO. One project that looks particularly interesting requires python scripting for a ISS simulation. This simulation is used to train flight controllers trainees. It teaches trainees what is nominal and abnormal telemetry from space station. Additionally trainees have to figure out how to fix whatever breaks the ISS simulation. The scripts I am writing simulates how day to day astronaut actions change telemetry. These actions include dispensing water for meal time and flushing the toilet. Yes, I am basically writing a space toilet simulator

Rare maintenance occurred this week to fix electronic hardware that was brought inside ISS from a spacewalk this spring. It required opening up hardware that had not been opened since before it was sent to space. I arrived in mission control promptly at 1:30am for a four hour procedure. OSO wrote the procedure that astronauts followed to fix the hardware and the software to test it. Some flight controllers prefer to work in the very early morning, sleep during the day, and enjoy free time in the evening. This week I have been meeting with all of my project points of contacts and reorienting myself to flight operations. 

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

Become a paid intern at NASACo-Op (Pathways Intern) with NASA

Check out what scientist are learning from the Year In Space astronaut twin mission

Learn about space radiation

Read  a fellow NASA Co-Op's blog - Imagine Nat

More on mission control operations during Hurricane Harvey

Cargo Ship Choreography: NASA Co-Op #3 Day One

Today I returned to Mission Control to support the ISO (Inventory Stowage Officers) console. This team is in charge of packing cargo ships, choreographing the unloading of cargo ships and letting astronauts know where they misplaced their socks. Basically, ISO knows where everything is in the bird's nest that is the International Space Station.

My task is to choreograph the unloading of a cargo ship docked to space station. This is no ordinary choreography however, I will be using a device I created training for with another Mission Control in an earlier Co-Op. In the Fall of 2015 I produced a training video for a device that has the potential to make difficult procedures easier for astronauts. Astronaut Scott Kelly and Tim Peake ended up using this training in space. This week I will be familiarizing myself with standard unloading procedures, watching videos of astronauts testing this new device and questioning what is the hardest part of unloading that could be made easier with this device.

In layman's terms - I am choreographing the unloading of a cargo ship onto space station that the astronauts will perform by using a helpful device.

My battle station.

Saturn V stage.

You may have heard on Good Morning America that Audio Files from the dark side of the moon "have been made public on the Science Channel series, "NASA's Unexplained Files."" - In reality these files have been open to the public since the 1970s. I'm writing to assure you all that tons of great content and discoveries have been released by NASA. NASA's mission is to advance innovation and share their findings. Even the technical drawings of Space Shuttle are public: http://history.nasa.gov/diagrams/diagrams.htm Here are audio files from all of the Apollo Missions: http://history.nasa.gov/ap10fj/ Here NASA explains the dark side of the moon audio: http://nasa.tumblr.com/post/139801679204/apollo-10-audio-publicly-available-since-1970s Photo by NASA

Defrag tech swag.

Day in the life of an engineering major: Notes so long you have to take a picture of the white board. Senior who has this life thing figured out 3D printing a robotic arm built with video game controller parts. TA makes fun of us for being lazy and taking pictures of the chalk board - revolt by taking selfies with the chalk board. Full wave bridge rectifier decided to cooperate with the breadboard today producing a clean image on the oscilloscope. Instead of causing stack overflows stability of a system can be diagnosed when looking at a block diagram. Professor judges the mess of clamps connected to super ground. Realizing you actually need to be employed after college, cleaning up and attending a job fair. Realizing everyone is having a post college employment crisis, talking to as many recruiters as possible while snagging free company swag.