Today was an interesting day. We awoke early in the morning, and left on time to make our 7:45 am meeting. It was decided that Nathan and Sean would take the payload a little after the first car left to minimize the time our structure was in the hot car (yes, it's hot at 8:00 am in Houston). Unfortunately, Nathan's car did not wish to cooperate and failed to start. After some frantic searches for jumper cables at the Ellington Field hangar, Sara and Tory ventured back to the hotel.
Upon arriving at the hotel, the group was able to jump start Nathan's car (hooray!). Nathan and Sean were able to get to the hanger, only an hour late - about 90 minutes before our Technology Readiness Review. Fortunately, little work was needed on our structure.
Sara and Tory, after rescuing Nathan and Sean, decided to visit Starbucks for some celebratory caffeine. After experiencing some drive-thru mishaps (missing the ordering location), the car was switched into reverse to fix this problem. Unfortunately, another vehicle occupied the space immediately behind their vehicle, resulting in an ever-so-slight "love tap." No one was injured, but both cars did receive some minor cosmetic damage. A few phone calls were made, and all was well.
Eventually, our team ended our terrible morning and began finishing up our structure. The main task left was to cover the sides and corners with foam and tape down wires.
The Technology Readiness Review panel consisted of about 20 individuals from NASA's Johnson Space Center. We gave a brief presentation to the panel, discussing our experiment's intent and potential hazards. There were few questions and concerns, so we took that as a good sign. Some other teams were not so lucky, requiring some rather extensive modifications to make their experiment safe to fly.
Pictured below is our complete flight team (minus our journalist). Our NASA mentor, Cj Johnson, is pictured down in front and will be flying with us.
After that, we were able to load our structure onto the plane. We were the first group onto the plane, so we had the opportunity to see the plane before it was full.
After bolting our structure to the plane, we were able to perform a final component check and hang up a sign with our experiment name. Despite our morning vehicle-related issues, we still expect our experiment to perform well in the zero gravity environment and are happy with our structure. Below is our structure as we left it on the plane.
We ended the day getting our flight suits and learning more about how to prevent motion sickness on the plane. We are hoping motion sickness will not be an issue - or, it will at least be an issue that resolves itself very quickly. Stay turned tomorrow for flight reactions from our flight team.
Tomorrow morning, Kevin, Sean, Cj (NASA mentor), and Tory (journalist) will fly the experiment. Kyle, Sara, and Nathan will fly on Wednesday. Our five-student team is pictured below after a nice unofficial photoshoot today.
Make sure to check the Arizona Daily Star as well as UANews tomorrow (Tuesday) for articles on our team!
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