INSPIRE Blog

Goodbye!

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 09:17:00 +0000

It is with great sadness that we have to say goodbye to our Online Learning Community called NASA INSPIRE. We had high hopes that we might avoid the axe that has fallen on many NASA education programs, and were working diligently behind the scenes to secure funding. But with the lack of a continuing resolution from congress we are facing what NASA calls the 'sunsetting' of our program. The OLC server will close on September 30.

We have had a tremendous success in the five years that INSPIRE has been available. For many students it was just a way to connect with NASA. But for some it was a vital part of their growth into a STEM based career. I am as proud of you all as any teacher could be of their students. I will miss our weekly chats, and the chance to meet you all during the summer experiences.

I want to encourage you to continue your STEM education. You can obtain excellent resources from the Technology Student Association (http://www.tsaweb.org) and may already have a club in your area.

Jim Gerard

NASA Catches Bright Fireballs Over the Southeast

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 14:22:00 +0000

By William Cooke, Marshall Space Flight Center, AL

Early Wednesday morning ( September 4), at 3:27:20 AM Eastern Time, a piece of an asteroid, about 2 feet in diameter and weighing over 100 pounds, entered Earth’s atmosphere above the Georgia/Tennessee border, just south of Cleveland. The meteor was moving northeast at 56,000 miles per hour, and began to break apart north east of Ocoee, at an altitude of 33 miles. A second, fragmentation occurred less than half a second later, at an altitude of 29 miles. NASA cameras lost track of the fireball pieces at an altitude of 21 miles, by which time they had slowed to a speed of 19,400 mph. Sensors on the ground recorded sound waves (“sonic booms”) from this event, and there are indications on Doppler weather radar of a rain of small meteoritic particles falling to the ground east of Cleveland, Tennessee.

Recorded by all six NASA cameras in the Southeast, this fireball was one of the brightest observed by the network in 5 years of operations. From Chickamauga, Georgia, the meteor was 20 times brighter than the Full Moon; shadows were cast on the ground as far south as Cartersville.

Discuss this blog here: http://tinyurl.com/bloginspire13

Contest: What Would you Send to the ISS?

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 14:00:00 +0000

By John Entwistle, NASA Education Specialist

The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the nonprofit organization managing research onboard the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory, today announced a four-week contest titled “What Would You Send to the ISS?”, which is open to the general public for submissions. Unlike Requests for Proposals CASIS has previously released, submissions for this contest can simply be ideas or concepts, not precise proposals for research. The contest runs through September 16, 2013, just in time to get your students’ creative juices flowing.

To learn more about this contest and how to submit an idea, visit http://www.iss-casis.org/Opportunities/Solicitations/RFIYourIdeaInSpace.aspx

Be sure to check out all of the ISS-related NASA Now classroom videos and featured lessons on the NES Virtual Campus. Just log into the Virtual Campus and search for “ISS” to see the list of 16 classroom-ready resources to inspire you and your students.

See You Next Year!

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 15:47:00 +0000

By Jim Gerard, INSPIRE Education Specialist, KSC,FL

Just getting ready to welcome many of our OLC members to the KSC INSPIRE Student Unconference! But I wanted to take a moment and thank you for your participation during this 2012-2013 OLC year. We had a wonderful time working with you, and are ecstatic with the progress you have made! Here is a graphic from our last LiveChat with some cool facts:

We'll be spending August getting ready for our next year of the INSPIRE OLC, so watch for an email that will tell you how you can participate. Until then, Ad Astra!

Pluto, "King of the Kuiper Belt, Prince of the Plutinos”

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 21:30:00 +0000

By Kimberly Ennico, Research Scientist, NASA Ames Research Center, CA

After the New Horizons’ instrument overviews on the first day at the Pluto Science Conference (Jul 22, 2013, we jumped right into Pluto in the Kuiper Belt Context.

Brett Gladman (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada) started the conversation by addressing “How does Pluto fit in our understanding of the Kuiper Belt?”

But before we get into that, discussing the Kuiper belt today can be pretty complex. It was only discovered in 1992, but in the years since, over 130,000 bodies with sizes 100 km and larger have been identified (Petit et al 2011), with Pluto being the largest member.

So when we start looking at large numbers of objects, it’s time to classify. So a typical plot to describe these “populations” is shown below, where semi-major axis (distance of body from the Sun) is plotted (horizontal axis, labeled ‘a’ in units AU, where 1 AU is the distance of the Earth from the Sun, Jupiter is ~5 AU, Saturn ~10AU) versus eccentricity (value between 0 and 1 that describes how circular an orbit it, e=0 is circle, e=1 is parabola, 0
And then you have your Classical, your Cold Classical, Hot Classical, Detached, Resonant, and SDO (aka Scattered Disk Objects), etc. Sometimes they group together, others are more uniform across the parameter space.

Kuiper Belt in a/e space.” Cold classical (black open triangles). Resonant Kuiper (open red square). Detached (blue triangles). Pluto is indicated with the yellow-box, it’s a Resonant, as it is in 3:2 Resonance with Neptune. This group of objects, all in 3:2 Resonance with Neptune are the “Plutinos.” (that clumping around 40 AU, red triangles, spanning over a range of e). Resonance numbers are shown at the top of the graph.

Plutinos are also a family of TNOs, Trans-Neptunian Objects, characterized by being in 3:2 mean-motion resonance with Neptune (i.e., every time Neptune makes 3 trips about the Sun, the Plutinos make 2 trips). Plutinos are the most dominant of the TNOs. Less numerous are the 1:1 objects, objects known as Trojans.

Definitely KBO soup!

For more information about TNOs and their period relationships with Neptune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonant_trans-Neptunian_object

After getting down those nomenclature basics, Brett Gladman (who is also lead for a huge ground-based survey of KBOs called the Canada-France Ecliptic Plane Survey/CFEPS) discussed the strengths and pitfalls of the theories put forward to explain the formation and structure of this complex KBO menagerie.

For more information about CFEPS check out http://www.cfeps.net/

How did Pluto get to where it is today? Two leading theories (1) Resonant sweeping of objects formed in TNO regions and (2) resonant trapping explain many things, but no published models explain those resonant structures of the Kuiper belt. And any of these models have issues with the classical and scattering disk populations as well. Theorists, better sharpen your pencils.

So he left us with questions to ponder. Is there a cold primordial Kuiper Belt with edge at 45 AU? Did Pluto likely form as one of hundreds to thousands of >1000km embryos? Did some of these been implanted into the nearby non-scattering belt? Are there others out beyond 100 AU (considered likely, but to discover them, you need to get down to 23-24th mag which is beyond the current survey capabilities until new telescopes and.or techniques come available)?

No doubt, searchers for more TNOs will continue, the classification of the KB will undergo evolution, and theorists will refine their models. And New Horizons will provide a unique data set of an up-close-and-person visit to Pluto and its companions to help constrain those models.

Putting Centaurs and TNOs in Context. This time plotting inclination (the degrees from the ecliptic plane) vs. semi-major axis in AU. Object sizes are reflected in the symbol sizes. Location of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are shown. Just another way to look at that awesome & diverse Outer Solar System. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Neptunian_object

Next, Cesar Fuentes (Arizona State) phoned in about his work on the “Size Distribution (SD) of the Kuiper Belt.” Size distribution is basically counting the number of objects as a function of size. Coagulation (of small particles) and gravitation instability (of larger particles) shape the size distribution. Size distribution is expected to change due to collisions. Different distances from the sun also appear to have different size distributions.

He stepped us through recent size distribution models from Schlichting, Fuentes & Trilling (2013) and Kenyon & Bromley (2013) where they even have some including the “collisional factor” influence on the size distribution over time periods.

All the Size Distributions show a “rollover” around H~9, D=70km. Nesvorny et al. 2013 investigates this further. Is the break due to collisional and therefore separate the primordial from the evolved KBO populations?

Even more questions to ponder: Can we use size distributions to evaluate primordial from the evolved KBO populations?

And then he left us with a tantalizing experiment with the New Horizons mission: If New Horizons can provide data sets enabling “crater counting,” we will be able to measure the impactors on Pluto. This can aid in understanding KBO populations, addressing specifically, formation time, timescales for surface activity, and origins of bodies like Nix & Hydra. What would a 0.1-100km impactor size distribution look like?

Pluto, be it Prince of the Plutinos or King of the Kuiper Belt, will always remain a key part to these questions above. And data sets from New Horizons will provide many new angles to answering questions about “Where did Pluto form and why did it wind up where it is now.”

Discuss this blog here: http://tinyurl.com/bloginspire12

Introducing the Pluto Science Conference Jul 22-26, 2013

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 15:10:00 +0000

By Kimberly Ennico, Research Scientis, NASA Ames Research Center, CA

The mind of a scientist understands, embraces, and executes the scientific method, the process by which an idea is created, then tested by experiment or model, validated or refuted, and then, when validated, culminates in the description of the results to the larger community through a publication. The cycle begins again, sometimes building on previously published work, or in some cases, the birth of new ideas to the scene, most likely inspired by previous knowledge.

A key component to a scientist’s work is the attendance and interaction with colleagues at scientific conferences. At such gatherings we can see examples of the scientific method in a multitude of stages: the birth of a new idea, the suggestion of methods to carry-out the experiment or computation, a presentation that disproves an approach requiring the scientist to start anew, through the description of the results of the recent experiment or computation.

~150 people are to gather this week at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD to share ideas, debate hypothesis, and explain experiments related to the emissary from our Solar System’s Third Zone, the dwarf planet Pluto and its moons. The timing is crucial to have these conversations because in two years from now, in July 2015, NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft will do close fly-by of the Pluto system, a system never before visited by another spacecraft. The forum provides an update of the mission and its measurement capabilities and encourages healthy dialog among theorists who have predictions, laboratory spectroscopists who can build examples of chemistry happening on these icy bodies, and observers who have been monitoring and documenting the changing nature of Pluto and its environment.

Details about the Pluto Science Conference can be found here:
https://dnnpro.outer.jhuapl.edu/plutoscience/Home.aspx

I’ll be providing summaries of the meeting content and discussions through a series of blog posts this week.

The diameters of Pluto and Charon shown with respect to the USA for scale.

What do we know about Pluto so far?

Highly elliptical (e = 0.25), Highly inclined (i = 17 deg), 248 year orbit
Rotational period of 6.387230 days
Small (diameter = 2328 ± 42 km), Rock/Ice object (“Icy Dwarf”)
Density is 2.03 ± 0.06 g cm-3, Mass = 0.0022 MEarth
Bright surface frosts of N2, CH4, CO, and C2H6 produce albedo of ~55%
Highly variegated surface (bright and dark regions)
Reddish in color, probably due to surface organics
Tenuous, variable atmosphere (mostly N2; 2-10 µbars at the surface & going up)

What do we know about Charon?

Discovered, by accident, in July 1978 by James Christy (USNO)
In circular orbit ~19,573 km from Pluto, with a 6.3872273 day period
Tidally-locked spin period (i.e., spin-orbit synchronous)
Diameter is 1212 ± 3 km (about half of Pluto’s Diameter: “Binary Planet”)
Density is 1.66 ± 0.06 g cm-3 (vs 2.03 ± 0.06 g cm-3 for Pluto)
Surface has crystalline H2O-ice and NH3-hydrate (recent?)
Average albedo ~35%, neutral color (variegation change over time?)
Average T ~ 50 K, low thermal inertia (high porosity)
No atmosphere detected yet (~10-300x lower pressure than Pluto’s)

Image: (left) Charon Discovery Image July 1978; (right) New Horizons’ LORRI instrument spots Charon July 2013 from 6AU away

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LiveChat Round Up 7/18/2013

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 14:14:00 +0000

By Jim Gerard, INSPIRE Education Specialist, KSC, FL

I hope you all enjoyed my LiveChat last night on Spacecraft Preservation and Display. It was to highlight a website that I created 16 years ago called A Field Guide to American Spacecraft. The Field Guide tells you were all the historic spacecraft are located, along with boilerplates, models, and mockups (don't know what they are? Watch the archive!). I have been collecting information and photographs of these relics, and now can include the space shuttle orbiters as well.

New Atlantis display at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

Check out the archived chat if you missed it, and don't forget to take the quiz to earn points. Yep, points still count! On Monday we will make a final tally and then invite our Level 10 leaders to a special Tuesday chat with astronaut Dr. Larry DeLucas. Keep working!

Next weeks chat will be the final for the summer, and there will be no quiz, but come and support your fellow OLC members who will be sharing their 3-D models they constructed for the Designing Future Space VSE this past week. And who knows, we may even play another round of Space Bingo!

Discuss this blog here: http://tinyurl.com/bloginspire12

Citizen Science Projects

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Olivia Humes, Rising Senior, Imagineers

Whether you’re looking for something fun to do or want to continue learning about science this summer, citizen science projects are a great way to get involved with scientific research while still having fun. There are countless citizen science opportunities available through websites, apps, and more. But just what is citizen science, and how can you get involved in these projects?

Have you ever participated in Globe at Night, featured as a short activity in the springtime on the OLC? If so, then you’ve participated in citizen science! Citizen science is a method of performing research that involves the public at large, usually by using data collected or analyzed by ordinary people. Globe at Night falls into the first category--participants gather data about the darkness of the night sky in their area. Additionally, many citizen science projects have the goal of increasing awareness and participation in science as a whole. For example, the Globe at Night project teaches participants about the effects of light pollution and the techniques of naked-eye observation in astronomy.

A great place to get started with citizen science is the Zooniverse group of projects. Originally started with the Galaxy Zoo project, where users classified galaxies, the “Zooniverse” expanded to include other areas of astronomy, and eventually biology, anthropology, and climate science. Participants can look for planets in other solar systems, watch out for solar storms, analyze weather data from old ships’ logs, or look for wild animals on the Serengeti. Already, citizen scientists have discovered new planets, unknown features on the moon, and mysterious clumps of gas in interstellar space. And when a discovery is made, your name can be cited on a scientific research paper!

NASA also supports citizen science projects. Two examples are Stardust@Home and Be A Martian. In Stardust@Home, participants analyze pictures of the aerogel carried by the Stardust space probe in order to find particles from interstellar space captured by the mission. Be A Martian allows participants to explore the surface of Mars from images taken by Spirit, Opportunity, and Mars Odyssey, and take part in a community dedicated to learning more about Mars.

The Great Worldwide Star Count, scheduled for late October and early November will be familiar to anyone who has participated in Globe at Night. This project asks participants to report the darkness of their skies in order to study light pollution, and though it takes place later on in the year, it is a great reason to go outside and look up at the sky while contributing to scientific discovery.

Finally, for a citizen science project focused on biology, check out Phylo, a citizen science project designed like a puzzle game. This project attempts to align DNA sequences of related animals in order to better understand the common ancestry of different animals, and the way that diseases have evolved over time. This project, like many of the others mentioned, uses human brainpower as a more effective alternative to complicated computer algorithms. In many citizen science projects, from classifying galaxies to tracking evolution, the human brain is better at analyzing the data than any computer program.

Links to the projects mentioned can be found below. Remember, this is only a small sample of the citizen science projects available, so look around for a project that interests you!

The Zooniverse projects: https://www.zooniverse.org/

Stardust@Home: http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

Be A Martian: http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/welcome

The Great Worldwide Star Count: http://www.windows2universe.org/citizen_science/starcount/

Phylo: http://phylo.cs.mcgill.ca/beta

Aviation Camp

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 05:30:00 +0000

By Haley Stumvoll, Rising 11, Alchemists

Every child has fantastic dreams like mine of flying. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be able to fly to the jungle to explore or have an adventure in the Alps? Last week I brought those dreams to fruition when I went to a weeklong Aviation camp at the University of Southern Illinois- Carbondale. Before I go into details about my adventures in illustrious Illinois, I’ll explain why I became interested in aviation in the first place.

I have hopes of becoming an engineer one day. I have been investigating several areas including electrical, mechanical and materials engineering. Since I’m interested in aviation, I’ve decided that I want to work to become an aerospace engineer. So I decided that being able to fly an airplane would give me an insight into what aerospace engineering is all about. INSPIRE was the catalyst for me to start looking into learning how to fly like Orville and Wilbur Wright, who I really hope to “meet” someday, and have been wanting to meet since the LiveChat with “Wilbur” last year.

I could go on for several pages about my experience, but I doubt anyone would be able to hang with me to the end so I will shorten it to my four top favorite things about Aviation Camp in the US heartland town of Carbondale, Illinois.

First, the flight simulators are a good way to practice piloting a plane, without actually being 1,500 or more feet in the air. It helps ease anxiety when you are actually 1,500 feet in the air because you’ve already seen the controls and flight instruments before, so you know how to control the machine that is keeping you from falling 1,500 feet. I successfully landed a Cessna 172 Skyhawk for the first time in a simulator and my partner would have been scared out of my mind if we had actually been in a plane.

Secondly, most mornings before going out to fly, we had ground school, which covered topics like basic aerodynamics, radio procedures and how to plan cross-country flights. The teacher also talked about basic flight maneuvers which was not only fun to learn about but also enormously helpful when it came time to actually try them out.

Thirdly, it was great getting to know others who had the same interests I did, especially since I have not really met other people who aspire to be a pilot. Similar to the field of engineering, aviation is largely a male dominated interest, which I hope can change. This was made abundantly clear when I found out that I was to spend six days with nine high school guys and zero girls.

Finally, my absolute favorite part of the camp was flying to dinner. I’ve had some fun times going to dinner before, but nothing beats flying down to Sikeston, Missouri for dinner at Lambert’s. About Lambert’s: the food is great, and the only way you get bread is if you can catch it.

I really recommend taking a flight lesson at some point because it is a fabulous experience. Flying in a small propeller driven plane has a completely different feel than flying in a commercial airliner. Before we recess for summer, I want to thank everyone in the OLC because I have had a great time this year, and really hope to be able to come back next year. Have a great summer everyone!!!

Space Habitat Innovation Challenge - Our trip to Huntsville

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 05:30:00 +0000

By Aswini Krishnan and Amelia Rolf

INSPIRE is an amazing program. The opportunities are endless. The skies keep widening, keep expanding, keep opening up new possiblities...

It was about two months ago, and our Space Habitat Innovation Team Members – Emily Beckman, Aswini Krishnan, Amelia Rolf, Netdao Yutakom, and Katie Britt – were up to our ears in school work. Yes, that last minute studying for those APs, immersed in our chemistry, calculus, and physics textbooks...

And then we received the news. We had won 1st place in the Space Habitat Innovation Challenge and were invited to visit the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama for a tour!

Our team had begun working on the Space Habitat Innovation Challenge in December. Our project was basically to design a future generation deep space habitat that could be used to house astronauts for extended periods of time, with a focus on interior design.

Because our other teammates had prior commitments, sadly only we two (Aswini and Amelia) were able to attend the MSFC tour. We would like to share our wonderful experience with you and hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it.

========================================================================

Our Space Habitat Trip to Huntsville: June 10 - 12, 2013

On June 10, we landed in Huntsville Airport and were ecstatic to see the smiling faces of Ms. Ingrum and Dr. Marks waiting for us right outside security. We got into the big silver limousine van (which Dr. Marks drove all the way to Alabama - thanks so much, Dr. Marks!) and after dropping off our bags at the hotel, went to eat a delicious dinner at Red Robin and later took a stroll in an open mall, admiring the beauty of the city.

June 11- the big day. After a light breakfast, we met Dr. Jamey Jacobs (the OSU professor who coordinated the Space Habitat Challenge) and we got into the van to go to MSFC!

First, we visted the MSFC rocket park, which had an assortment of models of past missions – like Saturn V.

Next we went to a building where interns were working on engineering projects and allowed us to take a look. One group of interns was working on controlling a device that slightly hovers above the ground to simulate the no-friction space environment. We then went to see the other group, which was working on improving the controlling mechanism for a robotic arm! The interns even let us try to control the robotic arm, and it was absolutely thrilling!

Picture: The interns and us. The girl on the left is Murphy, who was an INSPIRE student herself before she graduated from high school! She said that INSPIRE was the program that gave her the contacts and motivated her get into this prestigious college internship – Go INSPIRE!

Next, we got see a replica of the ISS and see the internal structure. An intern guided us through and explained the functions of its various parts. We then got to go and see the control room, from where they directly give commands to the ISS.

Then - what we had been waiting for - we toured the deep space facility! We had a great time seeing how the existing models of deep space habitat compared to our design and talking to our tour guide, Mr. Dischinger, about it. We then took a look at an experiment going on where a man wearing a suit with infrared light detectors emitting signals to cameras was able to make a computerized person move the same way he did.

After a filling lunch at the NASA cafeteria, we went to view rocket test sites. We saw the historic test site for the Mercury capsule and greatly enjoyed Mr. Dischinger's stories about the history behind the creation of the first space capsules.

After leaving the Marshall Space Flight Facilities, we went to the Space and Rocket Center, a museum designed for tourists. Before going into the main building though, we visited Mr. Scott Anderson and his NASA Digital Network facilities, and we explained our Space Habitat Innovation Challenge design to him, showing him our powerpoint. Before we left, he announced that he had a surprise for us and gave us both pictures of astronaut Bill McArthur, autographed by him! After profusely thanking him, we headed for the US Space and Rocket Center's main building. The museum was fantastic. We spent a lot of time in a black hole simulation game where we had to rescue ourselves from falling into a black hole by answering some questions about black holes through interactive activities. In another part of the museum, we found a robot that prepared frozen yogurt with toppings. And yes, each of us paid six dollars, not for the frozen yogurt, but to watch the robot make it. Entering a different section, we saw many replicas of space capsules and even saw some moon rocks, enclosed in a glass case, of course. And lastly, of course, we went to the gift shop and treated ourselves to t-shirts (which ever-so-cutely said "It's not rocket science ... oh wait yes it is!).

Back at the hotel and on the morning of June 12, all we could say was one thing: we didn't want to go home.

We would sincerely like to thank all the NASA INSPIRE, OSU, and MSFC staff for coordinating this amazing experience and making it possible for us to participate in the Space Habitat Challenge and visit the center. We learned so much over the course of the visit - not just about STEM but also about all the opportunities that are out there in NASA for us to look at now and in the future, and we surely will remember this experience for the rest of our lives. Our thanks for everything, once again.

Aswini & Amelia

INSPIRE Summer OLC

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 10:49:00 +0000

By Jim Gerard, NASA INSPIRE, KSC, Fla.

Happy summertime on the OLC!

July will be a busy month as we complete the 2012-2013 year of the INSPIRE OLC. We hoped by this time we would have news about next year but there is no news yet. The OLC is scheduled to close as usual for the month of August to provide time to prepare for next year. But we are filling July with great opportunities to keep you busy during the long summer days! Below are some of the exciting things that await you in the month of July.

▪ Level 10 LiveChat - By special invitation only LiveChat with astronaut Dr. Larry DeLucas on Tuesday, July 23. How do you get invited? Get to Level 10 on the Leaderboard! Cutoff for points will be Monday, July 22, at 12 noon CT.

▪ High Point Team Party - The team with the highest cumulative points will be invited to a special on-line party during the INSPIRE Cafe on Thursday, July 18. Team point cutoff will be Monday, July 15, at 12 noon CT.

▪ July Points Blast - To help you get as many points as possible for the above events, we are posting ALL short activities this week! Also remember you can still complete past activities and view LiveChats in the archives!

▪ Designing Future Space VSE - This Virtual STEM Experience will take place July 16 – 18. The objective of this Virtual STEM Experience is to provide insight in the art of industrial design. Featuring spacecraft design from the past to the future, participants will be given a chance to have a design realized on a 3-D printer!

▪ 2013 KSC Student Unconference - This student planned conference commences on July 30 to provide 3 days of tours and activities at America's Spaceport. Watch the special LiveChat Thursday August 1 to hear from participants.

What does the future hold? Be certain as soon as we know we will tell you. Whatever happens, we want to encourage you to continue your pursuit of STEM related careers in every way possible. Currently INSPIRE alumni are pursuing degrees at prestigious institutions such as MIT, CalTech and Georgia Tech, as well as numerous state colleges and universities. As Doc Brown said in Back to the Future III, "Your future hasn't been written yet. It is whatever you make it. So make it a good one!"

Discuss this blog here: http://tinyurl.com/bloginspire12

Protecting Planet Earth

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 05:30:00 +0000

By NASA Administrator Charles Bolden

Having looked back at Earth from outer space, I have seen just how fragile our home planet is – and I’m committed to doing everything I can to help protect it.

Yesterday, President Obama announced an ambitious Climate Action Plan to cut carbon pollution and put us on a more environmentally sustainable course. At NASA, where one of our primary goals is to improve life for everyone on the planet, I'm pleased to say that we have a number of missions already supporting this important work through our robust Earth Science program.

Scientific data and insights are essential to help government officials, communities, and businesses better understand and manage the risks associated with climate change. NASA will continue to work with the Administration as we continue to lead in advancing the science of climate measurement and adaptation and the development of tools for climate-relevant decision-making by focusing on increasing the availability, accessibility, and utility of relevant scientific tools and information.

Earth observation and the science associated with it have been central to NASA's mission for decades. Missions such as the Landsat series of satellites have been helping us establish a baseline of understanding and demonstrating the planet's changes over the past 40 years. Recently launched missions such as Suomi/NPP will enhance and continue our long tradition of climate observation.

Earth Science is a strong priority of the President's fiscal year 2014 budget request for NASA. The budget supports 7 new Earth Science missions on course to launch through 2020 after the launch of 4 new Earth science missions in 2014 -- the Global Precipitation Mission (GPM), Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), and the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III (SAGE III) instrument to be launched to the International Space Station.

These cover a wide spectrum of Earth observations and join NASA's 17 Earth science missions in space observing our planet's atmosphere and oceans, its climate, weather patterns, and much more. The data we collect helps us understand our planet as a dynamic, unified system. It helps us predict natural and manmade disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires and recover from them. Our satellites will play a critical role in helping us assess the carbon emissions problem, its history, current status, and possible future so decision makers can make informed policy decisions.

NASA's Earth Science program was established to use the advanced technology of our space program to understand and protect our home planet by using the view from space to study the Earth system and improve predictions of its changes. To meet this challenge, NASA promotes the full and open sharing of all data with the research and applications communities, private industry, academia, and the general public.

NASA was the first agency in the US, and the first space agency in the world, to provide full and open access in a timely manner, with no period of exclusive access to mission scientists, and at no cost.

NASA made this decision after listening to the user community, and with the background of the newly-formed U.S. Global Change Research Program, and the International Earth Observing System partnerships. Other U.S. agencies and international space agencies have since adopted similar open-access policies and practices.

In line with agencies across the government working on climate change issues, NASA will help disseminate scientific information and translate scientific insights into practical, useable knowledge that can help decision-makers anticipate and prepare for specific climate-change impacts.

All of our work in exploration has benefits here on Earth, by helping us understand and protect our natural resources, improve lives, and strengthen the economy. The President's climate initiative provides one more opportunity for our missions in space to bring science and technology home to the American people in a meaningful way.

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New Home for Atlantis

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 18:57:00 +0000

By Jim Gerard, INSPIRE Education Specialist, KSC, FL

The Space Shuttle program is over, and the hardware it utilized has been transferred to museums across the country. You can visit flown orbiters in Los Angelos, California (Endeavour), and Dulles airport in Virginia (Discovery), but the first dedicated facility to the program is the new home for Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. "Space Shuttle Atlantis," which debuts on Saturday (June 29), showcases the retired winged spacecraft as part of a $100 million exhibit that has been more than a year in the making. It succeeds in bringing the public nose-to-nose — and nose-to-wing and nose-to-tail — with Atlantis in a way that is unique to every other museum display of a shuttle orbiter.

With a reveal worthy of the 'magical' theme park in nearby Orlando, visitors will experience an encounter with the mighty spacecraft similar to an astronaut walking in space. Seemingly within touching distance, with its payload bay open and a replica of its Canadarm robotic arm extended, Atlantis looks less like a museum's static display than it does a still active vehicle, somehow frozen in place, as if it could soar back into orbit at any time. What's more, thanks to theatrical lighting and a 40-foot-long (12-meter) animated digital backdrop, the orbiter comes alive as the changing hues and resulting shadows stretch across its surface.

INSPIRE Students attending the upcoming Student Unconference will get to witness this new display during their stay, while others vacationing near KSC will see it as part of their Visitor Complex experience.

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First Day of Summer

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:39:00 +0000

By Jim Gerard, INSPIRE, KSC

This Friday, June 21, is the first day of summer. The Summer Solstice, when the earth's tilt is most directly pointed at the sun, occurs at 1:04am EDT. This has created some confusion in our western states as it would still technically be Thursday, June 20.

But two points to consider:
1) The sun, as does most of the world, does not follow Daylight Saving Time so it would be 12:04am EST which would make the Solstice in all the country on Thursday except the east coast by 4 minutes. 2) When do we celebrate day at night? It would always be the next dawning which is Friday for everyone.

So if you west coasters start your summer celebrations on Thursday, remember it is still spring until almost midnight and you are being a little premature. But then it is never to early to party.

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Why Should I Participate in NASA Challenges?

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 05:30:00 +0000

By Abigail Radford, Rising Senior, Alchemists

One reason why we love the OLC so much is because of the numerous opportunities it offers each one of us. Scholarly programs, internships, competitions—anything that we can utilize to our benefit is just a click away on the Equip page. From my personal experiences, I have concluded that the best and most rewarding opportunities lie in the various Challenges offered throughout the year. From lunar science, to product innovation, to robotics, to spacecraft engineering, there is bound to be a Challenge meant for your interests and passions.

This year I competed in the RealWorld-InWorld Engineering Design Challenge. A team of myself, Jonathan Hernandez, Kate Denner, and Joshua Dijamco worked together to design a sunshield that would protect the James Webb Space Telescope from cosmic radiation to allow it to detect infrared light from far away galaxies. Sounds simple, right? It certainly wasn’t. We had to incorporate many factors into its design like minimizing cost, maximizing the telescope’s pointing angle, unfolding the shield in space, and more.

We became engineers as we brainstormed possible design solutions, criticized each other’s work, and implemented the best attributes of each into our final design. We outlined our progress in an extensive 28-page paper. We advanced to the next round of the challenge and had to transfer the same information in the paper into a 3-D world called NIA Universe, an impressive computer program that took weeks to learn how to navigate in and use. After weeks of working during many late, coffee-filled nights, we finally finished our “world”. We anxiously awaited the final results from the judges, and finally, the announcement was made: Team Metropolitan (that’s us) won first place!

I cannot explain to you the overwhelming triumph and happiness I felt after receiving such good news. Our hard work had paid off and our ideas had been acknowledged and approved. There was even a cash prize of $833 for each of us that could be used to help with the costs of traveling up to the Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, MD. There, we were all reunited after months of collaboratively working on a huge project through virtual tools like Google Docs and Skype hundreds and thousands of miles away. We were treated like royalty upon our arrival. We even met the Director of GSC Christopher Scolese, who awarded each of us our very own flag that had been flown aboard the final flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. For the next few hours we were given a VIP tour of GSC and saw a Hyperwall demonstration, as well as the behind-the-scenes of NASA TV. Later we met with the 2006 Nobel Prize winner Dr. John Mather, who gave a presentation on some of his work.

We ended this amazing day with a bang: a viewing of the James Webb Space Telescope clean room. This telescope means so much to us. For months we slaved over every one of its details: its mission goals, size, orbit, and more. Before, we had imagined the JWST as something that seemed so intangible, unreal and far away. But finally, the awesome piece of technology we had been studying for so long was sitting right in front of us. It was surrounded by people who care about it just as much as we do. That moment was huge for me because I realized that I was on the right path: I want to grow up to become a part of a large NASA team that works together to produce an extraordinary work of art like the James Webb Space Telescope. Whether it will go to the Moon, Mars, or a near-Earth asteroid, I want to contribute to its success.

So why should you participate in one or more of the NASA Challenges next year? There are many reasons why, ranging from the people you will meet to the experience you will gain. Completing a group challenge will bring all of your teammates closer together, helping you discover a teammate that you work extremely well with. You will also learn effective means of communication, time management, and how to distribute tasks to achieve the highest level of efficiency. You will also learn a great deal about the topic you chose to do your Challenge on, helping you gain experience in that field which will put you at an advantage among your peers in the future. If your team works hard and functions smoothly, you could be next year’s first place winner. Who knows what exciting prizes and opportunities could come your way.

If you find yourself struggling while completing a Challenge, just remember to keep a positive attitude and that patience pays off in the long run.

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LiveChat Round Up 6/13/2013

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:30:00 +0000

By Jim Gerard, NASA INSPIRE Education Specialist, KSC, FL

Summer is upon us, and next week begins our first Virtual STEM Experience (VSE). We wanted to provide more in-depth classes for the OLC, and the VSE was created to give you deeper understanding of a STEM related field. Thus includes content from experts in the field, similar to what we try to do every Thursday night. In order to spend more time during the VSE withinstruction, we decided to move the subject matter expert (SME) to our regular Thursday night chat and open it for everyone in the community. This is what we did last night, when Dr. Shawn Donnegal-Goldman from Goddard Space Flight Center talked about his job of searching for evidence of life on other planets.

Dr Shawn talked first about finding other planets (around other stars), a task that the space probe Kepler does very well. (You can build a model of the Kepler spacecraft by clicking here.) With Kepler we have found hundreds of planet candidates, but even then our ability to directly observe them is very slight. A planet like the earth would be orbiting too close and be too dim to distinguish from the central star's light. Future projects like the star-shade could help us in observing these faint objects.

The following animation illustrate every star to date that Kepler has detected as having planets and the relative size and orbits of those planets.

To learn more about Dr. Shawn's work, you can follow his blog at http://paleblueblog.org.

Next week, more on the search for extraterrestrial life, but this time on Icy Worlds!

P.S. If you are in the Life on Other Planets VSE and were not able to attend the LiveChat, make sure to view it in the archives!

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Summer Stargazing: What’s Up Tonight?

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:38:00 +0000

By Olivia Humes, Grade 11, Imagineers

Astronomically speaking, the beginning of summer brings long days and short nights. Here on Earth, summer tends to bring fantastic weather and clear skies. Though you’ll have to stay up late in order to see them, summer constellations offer a rich number of targets for naked-eye, binocular, or telescopic viewing.

The Summer Triangle is an easy to find group of bright stars that can help point you to interesting
observing targets. Facing south, the Summer Triangle will appear as a large, nearly right triangle defined by the three brightest stars in view. The Summer Triangle contains the alpha stars of three different constellations: Vega in Lyra, Deneb in Cygnus, and Altair in Aquila. This area of the sky is particularly rich since it lies in the plane of the Milky Way. A quick glance through a telescope will uncover dense star fields and gas clouds, such as the Ring Nebula in Lyra. The Summer Triangle also marks the location of the Kepler target stars between Vega and Deneb.

Deneb is the faintest of the trio and is the tail of Cygnus, which is a cross-shaped constellation representing a swan flying roughly to the south. At the head of the swan, nearly halfway between Vega and Altair is a binary star called Alberio. With a telescope, the two stars making up the system can be easily resolved. Albireo is a particularly special binary system because the two stars that make it up are two different colors!

Later in the night, the constellations Pegasus and Andromeda rise in the east. Pegasus contains the “great square” located just east of Cygnus’s wingtip. The constellation Andromeda shares a star with the northernmost corner of the great square. The nearest large galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy is located in this constellation. In especially dark conditions, it can be seen with the naked eye as a fuzzy blob, but in cities and suburbs, it is accessible with binoculars or a small telescope.

Circumpolar constellations are visible throughout the year, but the clear skies of summer can give an observer a great chance to view them as well. Depending on your latitude, the number of circumpolar constellations vary. The closer you are to the poles, the more you will see. However, for the United States and Europe, both the Big and Little Dippers can be seen all night and all year long.

The brighter, Big Dipper can also be used as a guide to find other interesting observing targets. Within the Big Dipper itself, another multiple star system can be seen. With good eyes and a dark sky, the second star in the “handle” of the Big Dipper reveals itself as two stars, called Alcor and Mizar! The system is actually composed of six different stars. Mizar, the brighter, is a quadruple binary system, and Alcor is itself a two-star system. Though a small telescope and binoculars won’t reveal all six stars, they will help you get a better view of the double.

The last two stars of the Big Dipper’s “scoop” point towards the North Star, Polaris, in the Little Dipper. This constellation is fainter, but it is important for navigation. Not only does the star indicate the direction of north, but its elevation from the horizon indicates your latitude. If you travel further north, the Polaris will rise higher and higher in the sky. In the early summer, following the arc of the handle of the Big Dipper allows you to “arc to Arcturus” and find a red giant star in the constellation Bootes. After that, continue to follow the arc and “speed on to Spica,” a blue giant star in Virgo. Other circumpolar constellations visible near the Dippers include Cassiopea, the M or W, and Draco, a faint constellation that snakes its way between the two Dippers and ends near the familiar bright summer star Vega.

As summer comes, take the opportunity provided by clear nights and the end of school to learn some new constellations or telescopic targets. Besides the objects mentioned here, other great telescope and binocular targets are the Messier Objects, a catalogue of galaxies, nebulae, and clusters; or any planets that are visible. Be sure to find a star chart to help you get an accurate picture of what the skies look like at your latitude. Using a red flashlight will help you while working in the dark, but won’t ruin your night vision. Most of all, have fun exploring the night sky!

Printable star charts can be found here: http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html

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LiveChat Round Up 6/6/2013

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 17:33:00 +0000

By Jim Gerard, NASA INSPIRE Education Specialist, KSC, FL

Last night's chat with Paulo Younce, a robotics engineer at the Jet Propulsion laboratory in California, gave great insight in to new typrs of robots being planned for future missions. Highlighting Curiosity, Paulo gave a good rundown of the science that has been accomplished in the short time since landing on Mars. He also gave some great tips on how to prepare for a career in robotics.

Because of bandwidth limitations during our chat, we were unable to present the three video clips that went along with the presentation. I've posted these below. If you were not at the chat, look it up in the chat archive to learn more about these robots.

First is the Lemur robot, which can climb a wall or cliff.

Next, is a spider type that may oneday maintain a space telescope mirror.

And finally, a jumping robot. Wait for it....

Next week we hear about Life on Exo-Planets, a prerequisite chat if you are taking the Life On Other Planets VSE. But it is open for everyone one who is interested, whether you are in the VSE or not! So come and have a great time in the INSPIRE Cafe, open at 6pm and then stay for the chat at 8pm (all Central Time).

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LEO Progress: RS-25 Adaptation

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 05:30:00 +0000

By William Greene, MSFC, AL

I love dictionaries (yes, I know, you're shocked; shocked!). I have several at home and at work including a two-volume abridged Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that was a wonderful gift from my mother several years ago.

The definitions and word origin above comes from the OED on-line site. Embedded within our language is so much condensed history and accumulated knowledge that it's amazing. While I have no doubt that this is true of every language, I only know my own to any significant degree. Indeed, I've been babbling my own language for a long time now -- forty-some years -- but I can always pick up a dictionary and learn something new with just the flick of a page or two. You really can't say that about too many other things.

As the title for the article and the definitions above suggest, for this article we're going to talk about "adaptation," specifically about adaptation of the RS-25 engine. As part of the Space Launch System Program, we are undertaking something a bit unusual for the world of rocket engines. We are taking engines designed for one vehicle and finding a way to use them on another vehicle. Now, this is not a completely unique circumstance. The Soviets/Russians really were/are masters of this kind of thing. But for us, it is not something that we do very often. In terms of the big NASA program rocket engines, I can only think of the RL10 that was originally part of the Saturn I vehicle as an engine design that has had a long second and even third career on other vehicle systems. The truth is that engines and vehicles are, for us, generally a matched set and the reason is that we just don't frequently enough build that many of either. Note that, technically speaking, we are also adapting the J-2X from a previous program, Constellation/Ares, but that's obviously a bit different in scope and scale given where we are in the development cycle.

The name "RS-25" is, as I've mentioned in past articles, the generic name for the engine that everyone has known for years as the "SSME," i.e., the Space Shuttle Main Engine. There is much to talk about the RS-25. Lots and lots of stuff. More stuff that I could possibly fit into a single article. Here are just some of the RS-25 topics that we'll have to defer to future articles:

   • History and evolution
   • A tour of the schematic
   • Engine control, performance, and capabilities
For this article, I want to just talk about the scope of work that will be necessary to adapt RS-25 to suit the Space Launch System Program.

Clear Communication
The most significant thing that has to be done to the RS-25 to make suitable for the new program is that it has to be able to respond to and talk to vehicle. Remember, the Space Shuttle was developed in the 1970s and first flown in the 1980s. Yes, many things were updated over the years, but given the lightning-fast speed of computer evolution and development, it is not surprising that what RS-25 is carrying around a controller basically can't communicate with the system being developed today for the SLS vehicle. The SLS vehicle would say, "Commence purge sequence three," and the engine would respond, "Like, hey dude, no duh, take a chill pill" and then do nothing (my lame imitation of 1980s slang as best I remember it).

But here are the neato things that we'll be able to do: We can use almost all of the work now completed on the J-2X engine controller hardware to inform the new RS-25 controller and we can use the exact same basic software algorithms from the SSME. Because the RS-25 has a different control scheme from the J-2X, we cannot use the exact controller unit design from J-2X, but we can use a lot of what we've learned over the past few years. And, because we can directly port over the basic control algorithms, we don't have to re-validate these vital pieces from the ground up. We just have to validate their operation within the new controller. That's a huge savings.

This is work that is happening right now, as I'm typing. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, the RS-25 developer and manufacturer, is working together with Honeywell International, the electronic controller developer, on this activity. Within the next couple of months, they will have progressed beyond the point of the critical design review for both the hardware and software.

In the long term, it is our hope that we will evolve to the utopian plain of having one universal engine controller, a "common engine controller," that can be easily fitted to any engine, past, present, or future. Such a vision has in mind a standardization of methods and architecture such that we could largely minimize controller development efforts in the future to the accommodation of obsolescence issues. The simple truth is that development work is always expensive. It would be nice to avoid as much as that cost as possible. With the new RS-25 controller, we're getting pretty close to that kind of situation.

Under Pressure
Have you ever spent much time thinking about water towers? As in, for instance, why are they

towers in the first place? As you might have guessed, this is something that I wondered about many years ago as a pre-engineering spud. They seemed to be an awfully silly thing to build when you could just turn on the faucet and have water spurt out whenever you want. Ah, the wonderful simplicity of childhood logic: Things work just because they do and every day is Saturday.

The reason that you go to the trouble of sticking water way up in a tower is so that you have a reliable source of water pressure that can absorb the varying demands on the overall system. In the background, you can have a little pump going "chug, chug, chug" twenty-four hours per day pushing water all of the way up there, but by having this large, reserve quantity always in the tower, the system can respond with sufficient pressure when, at six in the morning, everyone in town happens to turn on the shower at the same time to start their day. The pressure comes from the elevation of tower, the height of the column of water from top to bottom.

On the Space Launch System vehicle we have something of a water tower situation except that, in this case, we're dealing with liquid oxygen. In the picture below, you can see roughly scaled images of the Space Shuttle and the Block 2 Space Launch System vehicle. On both of these vehicles, the liquid oxygen tank is above the liquid hydrogen tank. This means that for the very tall SLS vehicle, the top of oxygen tank is approximately fifty feet higher relative to the inlet to the engines (as illustrated). This additional fifty feet of elevation translates to more pressure at the bottom just as if it were a taller water tower. However, in this case liquid oxygen is heavier than water (meaning more pressure) and the SLS vehicle will be flying, sometimes, at accelerations much higher than a water tower sitting still in the Earth's gravitational field. Greater acceleration also amplifies the pressure seen by the engines at the bottom of the rocket.

"So what?" you're saying to yourself as you read this. After all, higher pressure is a good thing, right? If you have more pressure at the inlet to the engine, then you don't need as much pumping power. So, life should be easier for the engines with this longer, taller configuration. There are two reasons why this is not quite the case.

First, think about when the vehicle is sitting on the pad at the point of engine start. The pumps aren't spinning so all the pressure you're dealing with is coming from the propellant feed system. And now, simply, for the SLS vehicle it will be different than before. One of the tricky things about a staged-combustion engine, in general, is that the start sequence (i.e., the sequence of opening valves, igniting combustion, getting turbopumps spun up) is touchy. Given that the RS-25 has two separate pre-burners -- and therefore three separate combustion zones -- and four separate turbopumps, the RS-25 start sequence especially touchy. You have to maintain a very careful balance of combustion mixture ratios that allow things to light robustly, but not too hot, and a careful balance of pressures throughout the system so as to keep the flow headed in the right direction and keep the slow build to full power level as smooth as possible. We have an RS-25 start sequence that works for Space Shuttle. Now, for the SLS vehicle, we will have to modify it to adapt to these new conditions.

The second issue to overcome with regards to the longer vehicle configuration and the liquid oxygen inlet conditions is due total range of pressures that the engines have to accommodate. When sitting on the launch pad, you have the pressure generated by the acceleration of gravity. During flight, as you're burning up and expelling propellants, the vehicle is getting lighter and lighter and you're accelerating faster and faster, you can reach the equivalent of three or four times the acceleration of gravity. So that's the top end pressure.

On the low end, you have the effect of when the boosters burn out and are ejected at approximately two minutes into flight. When this happens, the acceleration of the vehicle usually becomes less than the acceleration of gravity meaning that the propellant pressure at the bottom of the column of liquid oxygen can get pretty low. Momentarily, the vehicle seems to hang, almost seemingly falling, despite the fact that the RS-25 engines continue to fire. Pretty quickly, however, the process of picking up acceleration begins again. (In the movie Apollo 13, they illustrated a similar effect with the separation of the first and second stages of Saturn V. The astronauts are pushed back in their seats by the acceleration until, boom, first stage shutdown and separation happens and they're effectively thrown forward. With the Space Shuttle and the SLS vehicle, however, the return to acceleration is not as abrupt as it was on Saturn V where they show the astronauts slammed back into their seats with the lighting of the second stage.) The point is that the RS-25 has to accommodate a very wide range of inlet pressures while maintaining a set thrust level and engine mixture ratio. While this has always been the case for the SSME/RS-25, the longer SLS vehicle configuration simply exacerbates the situation.

You'll note that I've not talked about the liquid hydrogen here. That's because, as I've mentioned in the past, liquid hydrogen is very, very light. Think of fat-free, artificial whipped cream. Yes, the top of the hydrogen tank is much higher, but due to the lightness of the liquid, it doesn't make much difference at the engine inlet even when the vehicle is accelerating at several times the acceleration of gravity.

Some Like it...Insulated
Look again at the pictorial comparison of the Space Shuttle and the Space Launch System vehicles shown above. Do you see where the SSME/RS-25 engines are relative to the big boosters on the sides of the vehicles? On the Space Shuttle, the engines were on the Orbiter and they were forward of the booster nozzles. On the SLS vehicle, there is no Orbiter so the engines are right on the bottom of the tanks and their exit planes line up with the booster nozzle exit planes. In short, the engines are now closer to those great big, loud, powerful, and HOT boosters. We are in the process now of determining whether this poses any thermal environments issues for the RS-25. Thus far, based upon analyses to date, there do not appear to be any thermal issues that cannot be obviated through the judicious use of insulation.

Other environments also have to be checked such as the dynamic loads transmitted to the engine through the vehicle or the acoustic loads or whatever else is different for this vehicle. The point is not that all of these environments are necessarily worse than what they were on the Space Shuttle. It is only that they all need to be checked to make sure that our previous certification of the engine is still valid for all of these considerations.

The Tropic of Exploration
So those are the three most obvious and primary pieces of the RS-25 adaptation puzzle: a new engine controller, dealing with different propellant inlet conditions, and understanding the new vehicle and mission environments. Each of these pieces carries with it analysis and testing and the appropriate documentation so there is plenty of work scope to accomplish. We are extremely lucky to be starting with an engine of such extraordinary pedigree, performance, and flexibility.

Henry Miller once said, "Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring." It is our intent to prove Mr. Miller wrong in this case. We will make progress by using the adaptation of RS-25 to enable the daring of our exploration mission.

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LiveChat Round Up 5/30/13

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:55:00 +0000

By Jim Gerard, KSC, FL

A great LiveChat last night with Katie Presson and Stephanie Dudley from the Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. That is 'Mission Control' for all the science payloads on the International Space Station. The two ladies were able to chat with us from inside an ISS mockup where they can check out the experiments that are flying aboard the ISS. We don't get to see the work place that often because our guest speakers chat with us after hours from home.

Did you know the ISS has been continuously crewed since October of 2000? That means 12+ years of science experiments that have flown aboard. The POIC is the place that makes those experiments happen, and provide the ground control to help the astronauts in performing them. Hundreds of experiments, from crystal growth and ultrasound to materials science and earth photography have made their way to orbit. And this is just the start, as commercial vendors begin providing access to the ISS, the opportunities will be even greater.

To download a flyer about the POIC, click here. You must be logged into the OLC to download.

Next week, we will learn about mini-robots from Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer Paolo Younce. Don't forget to come early and visit the INSPIRE Cafe!

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Greetings from the Astrophysics Institute of Potsdam!

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Tue, 28 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

By Zachary Bierstedt, Senior

Greetings from the Astrophysics Institute of Potsdam!

During my stay here in Germany, I have been fortunate enough to participate in not one, but two 1-week internships at places here in Germany. Last week I was at Rolls Royce Deutschland, and this week (Feb. 4-8) I have been at the Leipnitz Institute of Astrophysics. Many of you might remember earlier in the year I asked where you all wanted to me to focus on, fiber optics or solar. In the end, I ended up with neither.

Monday was the introduction day, where I was familiarized with the computer system. The AIP uses Unix, which is a Linux system, and I have to say that the way it is set up is weird. There are keyboard commands to get everywhere, not icons you can follow, so, for example, if you want to change the document folder you are in, you have to use cd (change directory) followed by the code of the folder you want to go to. I personally much prefer the Windows setup, but I’ve learned my way around Unix. After having a chance to get settled, I started right away with graphing the generic setup of the light cones for Einstein’s theory of special relativity. If you want an explanation of it, unfortunately I can’t give it because I don’t really understand it myself, just that it involves taking into account what position you are observing from and time dilations.

Tuesday had the potential to be a really good day, since I attended a lecture on the origins and the models of dark energy. Unfortunately, it was the last in a series designed for German university students, so I didn’t understand the language, the math, or any of the background. A couple of the models are covered in the YouTube video on dark energy, which, while far from detailed, is good for getting a basic idea of both the start of the universe and what dark energy is. The link is at the bottom.

Left is the physics building of the University of Potsdam in Golm, which is where the lecture was held. Wednesday was back at the AIP. First I was asked to program the Monte-Carlos method for determining pi. Basically, the concept is that you have a square of side length 1. Within this square, there is a quarter-circle of radius 1. Using a random number generator, the number of points that land inside the circle divided by the total number of points is about the same as the area of the quarter circle divided by the area of the square, and from this you can find pi. The more points you have placed in the square, the more accurately you’ll be able to approximate pi. Following this was a meeting on dark matter halos. From what I understood, every galaxy or galaxy cluster has a halo of dark matter surrounding it. We can’t see them, but we can observe the impact the rotation of the halo has on the motion of the galaxy, and from that we can determine the density of the halos. Determining the density of the halos helps us understand what impact they have on galaxies.

Thursday was even more programming. First was programming to find an approximation of the integral of a function using Simpson’s Rule. This was not too difficult once I figured out what to write, and then I plotted the integral approximation in a spreadsheet program. Following this was the first cosmological programming I’ve done, with 2-point correlation functions. This basically tells us how the density of galaxies within 2 spheres or circles of space are correlated. In a uniformly distributed field, the correlation function is equal to 0. However, by a complete accident the formula wasn’t explained well to me, so I got impossible answers without having an error in my program.
Friday was learning much more about the 2-point correlation equation. The function actually tells us how the density is correlated to the distances between points in a cube of space of an arbitrary size. I chose to use 50 megaparsecs for each side of the cube. Then, simulating a random distribution of 100,000 points within the cube, I wrote a program to find the distances between each point and every other point. I did get the program to work after a while. The computer just took nearly 5 minutes to run the full program. Then I moved all the points to within a circle with a radius of 10Mpcs, and ran the program again. The correlation function is, within each distance category, the number of distances of that length with the data set divided by the number of distances of the same length in the random set minus 1, or f(x)=(DD/RR)-1. There is a symbol used instead of f(x), but I don’t recall what it is. Overall, I did enjoy this internship. While I much preferred the work at Rolls Royce, the work I did at the AIP, despite it having no value to any of the projects underway at the AIP, is still very useful to know how to do before entering a career, and it involved a lot of programming, which I like to do.

Links: SciShow Dark Energy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATwVApurIQ4.

2-Point correlation functions: http://www.astro.rug.nl/~weygaert/tim1publication/lss2007/computerII.pdf

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How Model Rocketry Works

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Thu, 23 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

By Koa Halpern

Model rockets are small and simple compared to the rockets that launch into the vacuum of space. Yet model rocketry relies on many of the same basic principles of flight. In this blog post I will be talking about the wonders of model rocketry, and how it helped me understand how rockets work.

I’ll start off with the rocket engines that make model rockets fly. Model rocket engines are generally filled with either a gunpowder-like substance known as black powder or a more powerful propellant, ammonium perchlorate (AP), which was the fuel used in the Space Shuttle’s solid rocket boosters. Regardless of propellant type, these engines are designed to burn at a predetermined rate: too fast of a launch and the rocket airframe could shred apart (I’ve seen it happen!), too slow and the rocket could just sit on the ground without going anywhere. The length of the rocket’s burn and the amount of thrust it produces are dependent on the type and amount of propellant, the size of the combustion chamber and the shape of the rocket nozzle. All of these variables influence the thrust level and efficiency of any rocket, including those launched into orbit.

After selecting a proper motor, rocketeers must consider the problem of keeping a rocket stable. In model rockets, stability is generally enhanced with several fins at the base of the rocket. These fins increase drag near the back of the rocket, causing the less draggy (front) end to stay pointed straight up throughout the boost. (Think of holding an umbrella. As windspeed increases, the umbrella would turn so that its draggy end was opposite the wind direction.) If fins were not added to smaller rockets, they would fly very erratically. So, why do larger rockets not need fins? Generally, these spacecraft are steered by gyroscopes, which subtly alter the position of the rocket nozzle throughout boost to keep the craft pointed straight up. This procedure, known as “gimballing,” eliminates the need for fins.

Finally, rockets need to be recovered. Both large and small rockets are often recovered using parachutes. Many model rocket motors have a built-in “ejection charge,” which is a small blast that pops the parachute out a given number of seconds after launch. However, this approach has some problems: If the delay is too short, the rocket’s parachute may open too early, sometimes when the rocket is travelling upwards at hundreds of miles per hour. If the delay is too late, however, the rocket may plummet to the ground before it deploys the ‘chute. Some model rocketeers have added electronics to their rockets to solve these problems: sensors detect when the rocket is beginning to arc over, then deploy the parachute at the maximum altitude. Spacecraft use more sophisticated electronic equipment to deploy the parachute at exact altitudes, but the basic principle is the same.

All of these factors combine to make rocketry at all scales a very challenging but extremely rewarding pursuit. Rockets of all sizes require very specific conditions to fly successfully, and regardless of the rocket size, you can’t help but cheer when everything goes right.

Here’s a video of the “Inspire” rocket flying perfectly with a video camera onboard…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcmn5o9QPzg

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Welcome to Rolls Royce Deutschland

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Tue, 21 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

By Zachary Bierstedt, Senior

As many of you know, I have been fortunate enough to do my senior year in high school in the wonderful land of Germany. But of all the super cool and amazing things to do in Germany, so far the best one has been the Praktikum. The Praktikum is a student internship lasting one or two weeks at a place of the student’s choice. They are mandatory in the 9th class, but anyone can do them. This past week (Jan 28th to Feb 1st), I did a Praktikum at Rolls Royce Deutschland (RRD).

Here’s a bit about RRD. First, it’s not Rolls Royce Germany, it’s Rolls Royce Deutschland. That’s its name, so don’t translate it. Second, RRD works on jet engines. There are 2 centers in Germany: one in Oberursel and one in Dahlewitz near Berlin. I’m at Dahlewitz. Oberursel is the location of most part manufacturing within RRD and specializes in “Blisks,” which are a single component consisting of the blade and disk, while in Dahlewitz the engines are assembled and tested. Dahlewitz specializes in 2-shaft turbofan engines. Third, employees may work any time between 6 am and midnight, provided that they do NOT work more than 10 hours, which due to labor laws is illegal and would get RRD into a lot of trouble. Finally, the site is secured. I was not allowed to take any photographs. The pictures in the blog are from the Internet.

Because of the sheer amount of stuff I did at RRD, the rest of this blog post is split into what I did each day. Monday was the day to be trained in safety and basic operations, get all the safety equipment, and get introduced to the site of RRD. The first thing was a program called “Journey Through a Jet Engine.” This is provided by Rolls Royce, and is a thorough explanation of how turbofan jet engines work. Anyone can watch this, and it is in English. The link is below, and anyone even remotely interested in aircraft should look at it. And just a random fun fact from that: In temperatures of more than 600oC and in places where it can rub on other metals, titanium can burn. Following this was some boring safety stuff, most of which didn’t even apply to me since I don’t have a car and I wasn’t at RRD long enough to let me handle anything truly important. One of my guide’s colleagues also gave me a really interesting book published by Rolls Royce about jet engines, though I was not allowed to take it off site to read it. Then I acquired steel toed shoes and goggles for use on site before going on a tour of the test chambers.

Adam and Eve. Adam is closer to the camera

The test chambers are two large chimney-like places jokingly called Adam and Eve, which I shall also refer to them as. Within the test chambers, run time, endurance, noise, and fuel consumption tests are run on every engine produced by RRD. After the test the engines are inspected for any damage before being shipped off. In Adam there was actually a test running, so I wasn’t able to observe for long. Eve, however, was empty, so I was able to stand within the test chamber itself and see how massive the chamber actually is. Following the test chambers I was taken through the production area. About 3 engines are finished each day, and RRD has over 700 yet to be made, so they actually need to increase production a bit. I also got to see each part of the engine up close. Also, for those of you who wonder how airplanes slow down so well, apart from the flaps on the wings there is also a “thrust reverser” within the engine that serves as a wall after landing, deflecting thrust up and out the top and bottom of the engine cases and decelerating the plane. The day was closed with watching an LED in a fancy oven to determine at what temperature the LED would fail. Up to the maximum test temperature of 130 degrees Centigrade, the LED didn’t fail.

Tuesday was more focused on beginning work, though first was another tour. This was to MTOC, or Materials and Operations Testing Center. In 3 words, what they do is “shake and break.” MTOC is in charge of characterizing all the attributes of the components of the engine (especially any blade) and to determine if the component is strong enough to easily survive the forces it experiences in flight. To do this, they use vibration testing on the components, vibrating them and recording their motion until they break. This serves the dual purpose of finding the failure point, which should be well above average conditions, and validating the computer models, which are used since titanium and nickel alloys aren’t cheap, and pixels are. MTOC also uses special ovens and lasers to heat the components to running temperature before pulling on them to determine at what force the component breaks, since the titanium fan blades need to survive forces equivalent to the weight of 13 African elephants while at speed. Finally, MTOC runs the Blade-Off and Bird Strike tests. Both of those are exactly what they sound like. In Blade-Off, a small explosive charge is used to break one of the blades off a fan, and the fan casing has to keep all of the debris within the engine and direct the debris in such a way that it would not make the engine completely unusable. Bird Strike involves MTOC shooting specially raised dead poultry at a fan to see how much damage it does. For all of the Bird Strikes tests the engine still needs to be usable, and for more of them the engine needs to only suffer a maximum decrease in performance of 20%. There are high speed videos of both, which links are below, but as a warning, the Bird Strike video is a bit messy.

The rest of the day was spent working. I wrote up the report to the LED test, which was used as the actual official report, and then also tested an inclinometer. This measures incline in the X and Y directions (of for you who like degrees of freedom, pitch and roll) up to 80 degrees, and will be used for people who use really long tools in really dark places, allowing them to know if they have put the tool in without any incline so it does not scratch part of the engine. At the end of the day I was writing up the report before I left so I didn’t miss my bus home.

Wednesday was sensor day. The entire day had something to do with sensors, including MI cables, pressure sensors, flow meters, accelerometers, thermocouples, strain gauges, and thermal paints. All of these are used on engines to determine the kind of loads the engine components are receiving. Strain gauges in particular were interesting because they measure the amount of bending and twisting a component receives since the expansion of the component also expands the strain gauge, changing its resistance. More on how they work is in a link below. Thermal paints were by far the coolest thing, though. They measure the maximum temperature a part receives by changing color as the temperature, and thus energy imparted into the paint, increases. There are about 15 different types of paint, all with different ranges and shift points. However, one limitation of them is that they are time dependent, meaning that in the test to determine temperature they run the engine with the paint for 10 minutes acceleration, 3 minutes exactly at speed, and 10 minutes deceleration. Any more or less would change how much energy the paint received. There is a second method, silver melt-off, which will measure where the temperature is more than 980oC, independent from time.

The first thing that happened Thursday is that I got to see the mobile data acquisition trailer, called MIDAS. It has been all across Europe, including elsewhere in Germany, France, Spain, and England. It has to be able to be ready for use with just a couple weeks warning because tests can pop up at any time. Currently, there are no tests in the near future, so they are renovating the trailer. Following MIDAS I was introduced to how thermocouples work. Thermocouples consist of 2 unlike metals that, when exposed to heat, generate a voltage, and how large the voltage is (after being corrected for any extension wires of a different metal) can be used to find the temperature difference from a point of known temperature. There are many, many different types that can be used for temperatures above 2100oC all the way to about -250oC. Currently, thermocouples need to be used in high temperature material tests at MTOC because the heat causes the strain gauges to expand, changing their resistance and displaying a load even when no load is present.

Friday (last day. :’( ) was much less exciting than the other days. Most of what I did was pick up packages, delivery the measurement tools for the thermocouples and strain gauges to MTOC, and read a fascinating book about jet engines. I still did get introduced to 2 new sensors, though. They are fishbone strain gauges and accelerometers.

Fishbone strain gauges are 2 strain gauges set at 45 degree angles. The angle allows them to compensate for temperature, force, and other unwanted measurements, so fishbone strain gauges are only used to measure torque on an engine component. The way they work is the same as regular strain gauges, though.

As most people know, accelerometers measure acceleration or vibration. But the output from an accelerometer isn’t the actual acceleration of the component. When an accelerometer is attached to a component, it is recommended that they are attached with a screw. However, at Rolls Royce this isn’t always possible because they can’t damage the component. Instead, they glue it to the component using either epoxy or HBM adhesive. They also place a piece of aluminum tape before applying adhesive since it is difficult at best to remove the glue. However, the glue isn’t as rigid as a screw, and so something called dampening occurs. Dampening is the absorption of some of the vibration by the adhesive. Lower dampening coefficients mean the more effective the energy transfer is, and the more accurate the accelerometer is. Following this, it was time for me to check out, and my internship came to an end. It is a memory I will take with me for a long time, though, and I am glad I had the opportunity to work at Rolls Royce. If any of you ever get a chance to do a short work session at any company, I strongly recommend taking that chance, as there is a lot of how companies work, what they do, and how what you are learning actually applies that you simply cannot get in school.

All links are below, and if you have any questions or comments, please leave a message on the discussion board or personal message me. I will gladly answer any questions you have.

Right: RRD Dahlewitz main entrance

Links:
Journey through a jet engine: http://www.rolls-royce.com/interactive_games/journey03/index.html Want more Rolls Royce games/activities? http://www.rolls-royce.com/about/education/resources/12_19_year_olds/index.jsp
Blade-Off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek6adm4iV4Y
Bird Strike for those of you who do want to watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2OS2pwrZTI
Strain gauges: www.sensorland.com/HowPage002.html

Discuss this blog here: http://tinyurl.com/bloginspire12

NASA Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:00:00 +0000

By Grace Renninger, College Student, The Golden Ratios

If you haven’t seen it already, you really should go see astronaut Chris Hadfield’s cover of David Bowie’s Space Oddity right after you read this blog. Right now it has over six million views on YouTube. The video got me thinking about ways NASA publicizes its work. Most astronauts have twitter accounts, which they use, there have been several viral videos online, and in one of my favorite stunts, NASA put fake Mars rocks in public places that said “Get Curious” with a QR code that people could scan to learn more about Mars rover Curiosity.

Still, throughout all this, I still get people telling me that NASA is closing, and I had one student who was a Chemistry Major tell me he had no idea that we had an International Space Station. Why? Why don’t people know about what NASA is doing?

There is more work to be done, my fellow Inspirians. At last years Un-Conference, many students said that they wanted to become similar to a NASA ambassador – sharing NASA’s work with others and getting the news out there that NASA still exists and that it’s doing really, really cool things. I’ve come up with a list of 25 things that you can do to help publicize NASA’s work. They range from the simple to the elaborate. The seemingly obvious to the “Well, that’s pretty weird.” Since NASA has already played real life angry birds in space, I figured everything was up for grabs. Please feel free to come up with more ideas in the discussion board!

Make posters –making posters outlining some of NASA’s current projects is a really simple way to advertise what NASA is doing. You can add QR codes that link to NASA’s website, and ask your school or local library if there is a place where you can hang them up.
Host a NASA talk– Have a favorite NASA project? Host a lecture at your local library or science center where you make a power point and talk about it, and see if you can get an ad for the talk in your local newspaper.
Use your school newspaper—If you like to write, write a column about one of NASA’s projects. If you don’t like to write, then stop by your school newspaper to let them know about NASA projects, tweetups, or other events.
Chalk it up – People use chalk everywhere at my college. Write on the sidewalks using chalk to write down websites, advertise events, or NASA tweet-ups.
Start a Science/NASA club – Or, join one, if one already exists at your school. Your club can compete in NASA competitions (and get it covered by your school newspaper).
Host a NASA Astronaut Speaker – This one takes some money. You can let your school, library, or local science center know that you think it would be really cool to have an astronaut come and speak. Many schools/organizations have money set aside for events like these, and if you have a science/NASA club, you can help raise the money!
Tell schools about NASA Resources – This can be as simple as an e-mail. Let local science teachers know about NASA CORE, which sells NASA materials specifically for teachers. Also let them know about NASA’s Educator website.
Tell Teachers About Student Opportunities – Again, as simple as an email. Let local teachers know about opportunities that they can pass on to their students.
Dress Up like a Mars Rover for Halloween – Weird? Maybe. Effective? Yes. Who isn’t going to ask you what you’re dressed up as? What better way to launch into a description of NASA’s research with the Curiosity Rover? Or satellite? Or James Webb Telescope?
Make a Music Video – Make a parody music video off of a song, related to NASA. Post online. Wait to go viral.
Make a Video of a Really Cool Experiment – Some of you have already done this. Film your experiments and post them online. At the end, say a quick blurb about how this relates to NASA’s work.
Make a Video of a Rube Goldberg Machine – I’ve always thought it would be cool to make a really long Rube Goldberg machine, and film it. However many steps you’ve included relate it to NASA. For example, if you included 20, you could have said, “We’re doing this in honor of NASA’s twentieth annual Moon Buggy race.”
Order a Spinoff—Order a Spinoff magazine (They’re free), and donate them to your school or public library, or science center. Ask them if it can be on display somewhere for a little while.
Use Facebook or Twitter – If you have a Facebook or Twitter account, post some update whenever NASA is doing something cool. This is a great way to spread the news with your friends and family.
Start a Blog—Start a NASA blog where you talk about NASA news and events. This is a great place to post pictures if you went to the Un-Conference. Tell your school newspaper about it, they may do a story on you. If you use social media, advertise your blog on there, or ask your friends to advertise your blog for you.
Use School Projects as an Outlet – When given a choice of subject matter for a school project, consider using NASA as your topic. I’ve made power points, written speeches, and made brochures on NASA for school projects before.
Word of Mouth – The simplest of all. Talk to people. Let your excitement about NASA show.
Enter Art/Writing Contests – Are you artistic? Enter some contests, and consider using NASA as an inspiration for your artwork. I’ve written some poems about NASA history, and I know there have been INSPIRE students who have written short stories about NASA. If your school has a literary magazine, submit these to it!
Tell Teachers about NASA history – In high school, I always let certain teachers know when it was an important day in NASA history. They’re usually really excited to tell students about it.
Ask me about… Buttons – I was a staff member for our school’s literary magazine. When it came time to sell magazines, we all wore buttons that said, “Ask me about our literary magazine.” EVERYBODY ASKS. Why not wear a button that says, “Ask me about NASA’s Spinoffs” or “Ask me about NASA projects”?
Wear NASA apparel – Again, really easy. I had a space shuttle necklace, and had a surprising number of people ask me about it. It’s also a really great way to meet other students who are interested in NASA. I met a girl in an elevator who wants to work for NASA just by wearing a Kennedy Space Center T-Shirt.
Make an info-mercial Video – A lot of these ideas are videos, but that’s because they’re proven to be effective. Make an info-mercial about NASA spinoffs, or a NASA project you’re interested in. Post it online.
Use Local Astronomy Clubs—Many cities have local astronomy clubs, and they usually hold public telescope viewings. Ask them if they’re hosting any public events in the near future, and ask them if you can hand out brochures or fliers when people come in to the event. If your town has a planetarium, ask them the same thing. If your community has a Young Eagles club, ask if you can do the same thing.
Make a weather Balloon—I believe I heard from another INSPIRE student that they started a science club at an elementary school and sent off a weather balloon. This is beyond awesome. If you’re up for it – contact an elementary school and ask them if it’s okay if you can help make and launch a weather balloon with/for their students. It’s easy to use this as an opportunity to talk about NASA
Host NASA themed contests – This is a great way to get people involved with NASA who may not be interested in science. If your school has a science club, host a contest centered around NASA. It can be an art contest, a writing contest, a video contest, a musical score contest. Make the topic something like, “The Future of Space Exploration,” and ask that the entries be displayed somewhere in the school. If you’re homeschooled, try doing this at your local library.

I am sure that this list can be expanded. So please help! Add your ideas to the discussion board!
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LiveChat Round Up 5/17/13

noreply@blogger.com (INSPIRE) — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:04:00 +0000

By Jim Gerard, INSPIRE Education Specialist, KSC, FL

It has been awhile since the last LiveChat Round Up, mostly because I have had many Friday's off due to illness, flexible scheduling and personal leave for visiting family. I do want to share with you some important news about this summer's LiveChat schedule. But first, a brief update on last night's chat!

Once again we hosted the Georgia Tech team visiting the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, whose six member team had two INSPIRE alumni, Commander Christine Redmond and Communications Officer Shelby Bottoms. Unlike in the past when we had a reular style chat where the whole crew participated, this year it was during the middle of their scheduled comm window with Mission Control so bandwidth was very limited. To get around this, Shelby sent their Power Point with an imbedded audio narration. This way they would not have to use audio and can preserve bandwidth. Unfortunately, the Blackboard Collaborate program does not allow extra files when you upload a presentation, so I needed another way to share that with you.

My solution was to hookup my laptop audio out to my desktop audio in, and while I changed the slides in the chat room I could follow along with my laptop Power Point and click and play the recording. But I found in doing so my speakers cut off and I could not hear the narration, and if I wanted to speak I have tor go into tools and reset the microphone. I solved this problem by using my iPad and entering in as a student, which allowed me to hear and talk. It worked pretty well (after I remembered to press my talk button on the desktop!) we were eventually joined by Shelby to answer questions. Remember, where there is a will, there is a way!

Now our LiveChat news: Next week is our annual end-of-school chat NASA @ The Movies which I will host. It should be a lot of fun so make sure to tune in! But it is not the end of the LiveChat, as we will continue through the summer! every Thursday night at 8pm CT will be new chat. Some of these will be host to subject matter experts for our Virtual STEM Experiences (sign up now!) but we wanted to share them with a larger audience and free up time for more instruction so we moved them to the LiveChat.

We are also having a very special chat just for students who reach Level 10 on the Leaderboard. It will be Tuesday, July 23 at 11am CT (that is during the day!) and will give an opportunity to have a more intimate conversation with a returning LiveChat guest. Just a teaser for now, but more details will be coming soon! Until then, continue to work to build up your points to reach the top of the Leaderboard!

Discuss this blog here: http://tinyurl.com/bloginspire12