Diary and Adventures of a Space Cadet Issue no. 2
29-07-2003
By: Ray Carroll
Ray is a masters student at the TSSG research group at Waterford Institute of Technology. He has been awarded a place on the Discover Science program (see Diary and Adventures of a 'Space Cadet' - Issue no.1) and is spending six weeks at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) headquarters in Florida, from where he has sent this update.
OK, so I'am not going to tell you about the apartments 200 yards from the beach, the beach bars, the amazing lightning storms, the Miami-vice style air/fan boats and I won't even mention the fantastic weather. This is because I've got much more interesting things to talk about
On the science front we've seen some fairly amazing things. There was a satellite launch last week, which was spellbinding. But the best was seeing the modules for the International Space Station being launched.
For those who don't know, a space station is in the process of being built in orbit around the Earth. Because of the tragic Columbia crash no manned shuttle launches are planned here for a while so there have been about 6 parts of the station here waiting for launching. Not many are usually
allowed to see them but we were lucky enough to be given access to some of the space labs.
As a learning exercise, we will also be launching a balloon to about 100,000 ft. We have been split into 3 groups and each group is building its own payload and will launch their own balloon. The payload is basically a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver and an RF (Radio Frequency) transmitter to track the balloon and some temperature sensors etc. Much of the work we've been doing so far has been pretty much been electronics based.
We have had lectures on telemetry, payload design, space science etc. and will have many more lectures over the next week or two. We've also met a few of the astronauts, the new director of NASA and the mission managers for the ISS processing facility.
Everyone has been very supportive and they've made every effort to get us into places that no one else gets to see.
Too much to say with too little time. But just one last thing before I go; I've tasted crocodile and it's nicer than chicken.
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