This weekend was very productive for the team. Saturday was spent trying to finalize everything for next week. Several logos were printed and attached to our structure, representing UASEDS, Arizona Space Grant, the University of Arizona, and our mission patch.
A large poster will be taped to the side of the plane's interior near our structure with our experiment title and a NASA Reduced Gravity logo as well.
We spent some time modifying the software to make the experiment's start-up procedure as easy as possible. If all goes according to plan, our experiment should be fairly automatic, with us monitoring the systems in place during the flight. Two liquid lenses were also created Saturday with much success. Only one will be used for the flight, so we have one as a spare. One liquid lens is pictured below.
With the SCOTS test setup on our structure, we were able to take data of our liquid lens on the ground, which can be seen below.
It is clear that the fringes are thicker on the bottom portion of our lens which is related to the influence of gravity on the liquid-liquid interface. We are expecting the lens to produce a much better and symmetric image while in microgravity.
Saturday's dinner was spent outside, grilling hot dogs and hamburgers with the others teams at our hotel, including the University of Florida, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the other University of Arizona team.
On Sunday, we had time to explore the surrounding area, visiting Space Center Houston in the morning. We were able to drive some Martian rovers, design rockets, tour Space Shuttle Adventure (note: not a spacefaring craft), rock climb on Mars, play human foosball, design a mission to Mars, shoot some air guns, and drink Starbucks all in one place. Good times were had by all.
After Space Center Houston, we decided to drive to the beach in Galveston, TX. The ocean waves helped in our parabola training - our first flight is on Tuesday!
The Test Readiness Review is tomorrow morning, but everything seems to be ready, so we are in good shape. Stay tuned for frantic future updates after everything goes wrong.
Posted by Kyle Stephens
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