This Morning I Asked International Space Station Program Science Office Of Astronauts Can See 4th Of

I had the awesome opportunity to have coffee with Johnson Space Center (JSC) Director Ellen Ochoa and Deputy Director Mark Geyer. Above I am pictured to the left of Ochoa in a red blazer and I look pretty serious writing notes. JSC leaders have been striving to hear voices from employees up high, in the trenches, wise, and new. Recently JSC Center and Deputy Directors have hosted coffees to share their goals for JSC and listen to concerns. Ochoa and Geyer shared their vision of JSC 2.016, how NASA can do more with less resources and deliver what is expected and beyond on current missions. Out of all NASA contractors and civil servants I was randomly selected to share my perspective and concerns as a Co-Op.

JSC 2.016

It's no secret that NASA's budget is far less than it was during the Apollo Era. NASA's budget was over 4% of the federal budget during the Space Race to the Moon and now below 1% despite NASA's goals to journey to Mars. Keeping realistic in funds and resources JSC 2.016 is a mantra adopted by NASA employees to do more with the resources they have. At the coffee Ochoa shared that the goals of JSC 2.016 is to ensure our work is pushing forward NASA's current missions, enabling change by listening to and adopting new ideas, removing obstacles that hinder progress, and share NASA's missions with communities.

Concerns

Before attending the coffee I polled JSC interns and Co-Ops to see if they had  concerns and questions to share. Within moments of the coffee starting Ochoa and Geyer shared essential insights on how NASA’s mission is evolving in a five, ten and beyond year sense - it was very Carl Sagan Cosmos-esk. Once I was brought to this level of long-term thinking my key concern broadened from specifics. During my opportunity to talk I mentioned the concern about the vagueness of the Journey to Mars mission compared to the solidity of Space Launch System, Orion, Space Station and Commercial Crew missions. I was surprised to hear that fluidity of our Journey to Mars is actually intended. Discoveries and knowledge from Space Launch System, Orion, Space Station and Commercial Crew missions are necessary before solidifying the Journey to Mars. During those missions we will collect a lot of data on the vehicles that will be carrying our astronauts, learn new things we didn’t plan to learn and test the waters with deep space collaboration with private industries and international partners. Fluidity is the nature of NASA’s long-term impact on humanity which is unique to all other forces in the world advocating for short term instant gratification (short term can even mean one year, eight years and even decades compared to humanity as a whole). NASA must deliver what is expected of us and beyond on these current solid missions to ensure more solidified Mars related mission in the future.

We Still Need NASA

With all the SpaceX, Lockheed Martin and general private space industry hype some may have the impression that we no longer need NASA for space exploration. Articles titled "U.S. government should fund private space companies, not NASA" paint false claims of competition between government space missions and private industry. During this coffee this misconception of competition was expunged and I was re-energized about why we still need NASA. NASA, as a subset of the US Government, awards contracts to private space companies that would otherwise not be able to pursue these aerospace endeavors because they do not bring in a profit. The government can risk to make these long-term investments without certainty of short-term instant gratification like profit. There is a tendency to forget that NASA has been contracting work to private companies since the 1960s. Grumman Aircraft was contracted to build the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) in 1962. Being a government agency, NASA can foster a unique relationship between other countries space agencies such as ROSCOSMOS, JAXA and ESA. Through decades NASA is the government agency that has lead the cohesiveness and steady beat of the drum of space exploration progress.

SPACEWALK LIVE! http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv Edit/update: I was mistaken, Shane is preforming the EVA and not Peggy. As of 9:50amCT the astronauts are over 1.5hrs ahead of schedule and now performing extra tasks to get ahead. I am out of mission control now. They completed installing new Lithium Ion batteries.

100 Million X-Rays: NASA Co-Op #2 Week Three & Four

Jupiter orbital insertion, FIRST robotics coach visit and humidity sensor test prep have filled these past two weeks.

Drafting a fluid schematic complete with themocouples and pressure gauges I learn some fluid dynamics not expected to acquire as an electrical engineering and computer science major. The humidity sensor will be tested three ways - for 0% humidity with evaporating liquid nitrogen (Yah!), for ~ 50% with ambient room humidity down here in Houston, and >50% with ambient air being pulled through a water filled bubbler. Sensors will systemically be scattered to collect data and determine with a hefty amount of PV=NRTing if the humidity sensor works. After learning PV=NRT can only be used when you are certain the amount of water and vapor are equal to derive humidity we came up with the simple three part test matrix explained above.

My high school FIRST Robotics coach came to Johnson Space to tour some spacefaring robots, propulsion test center and space station mock ups (exact replicas of what is in space) at the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility! We also visited Houston’s Natural Science Museum and biked on Galveston.

Within a second of what was expected the Juno Spacecraft performed her tasks successfully and inserted into Jupiter’s orbit. This basketball court sized spacecraft will be exposed radiation equivalent to a human receiving 100 million X-Rays in a year. Juno also captured the first demonstration of celestial harmonic movement hypothesized by physics. Powered by solar energy this Juno is unique because most crafts that travel this far are radioisotope thermoelectrically powered. A critical part of this insertion was turning the solar arrays back toward the Sun post insertion.

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

Watch…

Juno Media Briefing: https://youtu.be/I6uUEYOzipw

Juno Insertion: https://youtu.be/zfIqnpqPFbI

Juno Post Insertion Media Briefing: https://youtu.be/LH_uPWU5V3o

Apply for a NASA Internship: https://intern.nasa.gov/ossi/web/public/guest/searchOpps/

Apply for a NASA Co-Op (check back as it is updated as soon as one opens): http://nasajobs.nasa.gov/studentopps/employment/opportunities.htm  

NASA Co-Op Week 5: NASA After Hours 

Surprisingly NASA, like college, has a plethora of "extra-curriculars" including intramural sports and committees. Interns at Johnson Space Center (JSC) are uniquely involved in extracurriculars. JSC interns hold weekly meetings. Twice a month PIPE, a professional social group meets and SCuM, a social social group. PIPE hosts committees like professional development, social media (managing NASA Twitter & Facebook accounts), PAXC (Pathways Agencies Cross Center Connection), and Tours & Lectures. SCum hosts committees like Sports, Intern Video, Fancy Dinner, and Skydiving (an intern tradition). 

I am currently the lead of Tours/Lectures. A group of us arrange tours at neat locations around JSC like flying a T38 jet trainer, the largest pool in the world where astronauts and Robonaut lab. Lectures are also arranged by the group including Anne Roemer, head of the Astronaut Selection Committee, Ginger Kerrick, Assistant Director for the International Space Station, and Everett Gibson, Moon Rock Expert. 

PAXC is a group that unites all the NASA Centers. Every other week we video conference with all the other centers! Glenn in Ohio, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Langley in Virginia. We get to hear about what the other centers are working on, lectures from their center leaders and dream about touring each other's centers. 

Hacking into a lawnmower robot is another activity I take part in. We are converting an autonomous navigating lawn mowing robot into a tele-operated human controlled robot. This requires taping into the robots controls and adding wireless communication between the robot and controller. Using an Adruino controller we can send signals to the robot so we have been learning how to use it. 

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED 

Learn about some the lecturers we will be hearing from: Anne Reomer, Ginger Kerrick & Everett Gibson 

Watch what NASA is doing to enhance the mission to Mars 

Start your career with NASA and tune into a Virtual Career Fair and hear about internship, fellowships and scholarships October 8th 12pm-3:30pmCT

Data from: McCarthy, Niall. "Some Tech Internships Pay More Than $75,000 A Year." Statista The Statistics Portal. N.p., 5 Mar. 2014. Web. 24 Feb. 2015.

Space Habitat Simulator in The HIVE lab.

Tech Opportunities: Grace Hopper Day 2

An overwhelming aspect of the Grace Hopper Conference is the career fair and hosted lunches. During which you get to exposed to many career, learning and conference opportunities. I couldn't possibly take advantage of all these opportunities so I will share them with you.

Hour of Code: Everyone

Learn a bit of programming for an hour or longer if you like! Simply projects to get you jump started with programming.

Bank of America Internships: Current Students

Hiring and looking for interns in cyber security, user interface design, software, IT and more.

NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Community: Women in College

Attend conferences, access to exclusive scholarships, exposure to internship opportunities, join a support group of over 2500 like minded women who share a similar passion for computing. A support network where you can connect with others 24/7. There is always someone posting or responding on the Facebook page!

Google & Microsoft Internships: Everyone

At the Grace Hopper Conference Google & Microsoft heavily stressed that they are hiring and recruiting more interns and full time hires. They both offer parental leave meaning both parents get paid leave for many weeks for a child!

Best Buy: Everyone

During the career fair Best Buy was hosting a coding challenge which caught my attention. They displayed medium level code in various languages and you had to determine what it outputs. After completign the challenge they described various engineering, analyst and IT.

Code Camp | Square: College & High School Women

Five day to week long tech immersive camp where you code, practice leadership and complete group engineering projects.  

NASA Co-Op and Internship: Current Students

Of course I am going to list NASA opportunities I Co-Op at NASA! Everybody in every discipline can contribute to NASA's mission and humanities goals to advance space exploration. There are current education, fashion design, art, engineering, computer science, and biology majors and more!

These are the first nine opportunities that popped into my head and I will share more as the conference progresses.

Cargo Ship Choreography: NASA Co-Op #3 Day One

Today I returned to Mission Control to support the ISO (Inventory Stowage Officers) console. This team is in charge of packing cargo ships, choreographing the unloading of cargo ships and letting astronauts know where they misplaced their socks. Basically, ISO knows where everything is in the bird's nest that is the International Space Station.

My task is to choreograph the unloading of a cargo ship docked to space station. This is no ordinary choreography however, I will be using a device I created training for with another Mission Control in an earlier Co-Op. In the Fall of 2015 I produced a training video for a device that has the potential to make difficult procedures easier for astronauts. Astronaut Scott Kelly and Tim Peake ended up using this training in space. This week I will be familiarizing myself with standard unloading procedures, watching videos of astronauts testing this new device and questioning what is the hardest part of unloading that could be made easier with this device.

In layman's terms - I am choreographing the unloading of a cargo ship onto space station that the astronauts will perform by using a helpful device.

My battle station.

Saturn V stage.

Big Day In Space: NASA Co-Op #3 Week 12

Spacewalk

An International Space Station spacewalk with a runaway micrometeorite shield and SpaceX landing of a rocket which has already flown in space marks a busy week in space exploration.

American NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson conducted her eight spacewalk March 30th, 2017. Logging an accumulative 59 spacewalk hours, Peggy has surpassed the current record of female spacewalk hours. Peggy is now the third most experience spacewalker behind Anatoly Solovyev (68 hours) and former astronaut Mike Lopez-Alegria (67 hours). Accompanying Peggy on the spacewalk was current Space Station commander Shane Kimbrough.

The goals of the spacewalk included reconnecting cables and electrical connections to PMA3 on the Harmony node. Peggy and Shane also installed an upgraded computer relay box on Space Station's truss and installed shields to PMA3 and common berthing mechanism.

During the spacewalk, one of the shields was inadvertently lost. Fortunately, the shield floated away safely and does not pose a threat to Space Station nor the crew. However, the device missing a shield still needed to be protected. Mission Control engineers jumped into action with an Apollo 13-esque energy to solve how to replace the cover. They devised a plan for the astronauts to finish covering the port with the PMA-3 cover Whitson removed earlier in the day.

Leading this effort from the ground included  light Director Emily Nelson and Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM)/Astronaut Anne McClain. Below you can see circled in green CAPCOM McClain & circled in purple Flight Director Nelson. 

SpaceX Reusable Rocket

Falcon 9 rocket will delivered a commercial communications satellite to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). SpaceX is on the road to full and rapid reusability as the world’s first reflight of an orbital class rocket, whereas NASA's Shuttle was a human transport between Earth and Space Station.  Falcon 9’s first stage was previously supported a mission in April of 2016.

Rewatch the launch and landing broadcast here.

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

Science Friday featured NASA Robotics and exploring the galaxy

Apply to be a NASA Intern

Accomplishments this week at NASA

NASA panelists at a Women History Month event

Launch your Aerospace Career

More pictures from the spacewalk...