Day 3 - Tours and a Surprise Visit!

We started out the day working on our SLED and the teachers had fun on the POGO. POGO is a simulator used by NASA since the 1960's to simulate low gravity and weightlessness EVA maneuvers.

After this we went back up to our work room and heard a presentation from Matt Lemke. He talked to us about the scientific research that goes on at the ISS.

We were interrupted by astronaut Joe Acaba who has been back on the ground for 3 weeks now, having been on ISS for about 6 months. He answered questions we had and we got pictures with him.

Here's a video of Joe on ISS that was just released today about one of the experiments he was running.

Shortly after this we were split up and groups went to the VR and the Simulations of the Orion Capsule. After the Orion capsule visit, we walked through mission control.

Following this, we worked our way back to building 9 and built accelerometers and then went to go test them at the Kema boardwalk. This is a tourist area nearby on the shore of a coastal bay. Ben experienced his first roller coaster and the rest had fun feeling the g's!

We finished the day eating dinner at the boardwalk and watching the sunset on the way back to our hotel.

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Day 5 - Pulling it All Together

Today started with the pack up! We gathered our luggage and collected it together at the hotel to prepare for our mid afternoon departure. But first - a great day of learning and wrapping up was to be had. We departed from the hotel and headed to visit NanoRacks. This is a private contractor that facilitates the use of "Cube Satellites" on the ISS. These are 4" x 4" x 4" satellites that can be loaded with electronics, sensors, cameras, and/or whatever developers dream up. NanoRacks provides some of the structure and framework for research to take place both on the ISS directly as well as to launch CubeSats from ISS into Low Earth Orbit. We got to see some Cubes and hear about the process of preparing them and launching them into orbit. This was the most direct connection to our engineering project - as we created a satellite ejector system to run on the PABF (Precision Air Bearing Floor). It was a great way to see the value of the teamwork of our gr

Day 4 - Successful Launch

We started our day by listening to a presentation about Space-X and Boeing's progress on getting astronauts to the International Space Station. The presenter explained what the future may bring and the possibility of launching American astronauts from American soil rather than from other places like Russia. We also took a field trip to the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBC). There we were given a tour of the 202 ft by 102 ft 6.2 million gallon pool where astronauts can practice space-walks. They also use the pool to simulate water landings with the Orion spacecraft. When we got back to building 9, we started our one-hour testing session. We had problems with the laptop being hooked up to the Arduino. Eventually, we had to leave the laptop connected to the Arduino while the SLED was launched. However, once we fixed that, we slowly worked our way closer and closer to the goal. We did that by editing the code to keep the SLED shooting consistently. We ended up getting 3 goals b

Arrived!

Our work has arrive at NASA and is ready for us!

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