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 by the end of our session today!

We got to visit the Launch Abort system that is being prepared for testing here at JSC.  We saw the Orion capsule that will be used for testing as the engineers were working on it today.

When our session was over we worked with a NASA education specialist to try out an activity they have created. We went through a simulation to decide what astronauts and what equipment to send to the ISS to conduct specific experiments.  We also had to decide what rockets to use to send them there.  We recognized some of the difficulties that NASA employees go through as they have to take mass, volume, and pressure into consideration when deciding what cargo to bring.