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UPDATE #29 - August 7, 1998 PART 1: Back to School Special BACK TO SCHOOL SPECIAL
Well even if you aren't a parent, teacher or a student, the sales inserts and signs on the shops have reminded you that it's time to sharpen pencils and get ready for Back to School! Wright Flyer Online Site has several new back to school specials. I want to call your attention to the Teachers' Guide in the Teachers' Lounge. If you want to teach a mini-unit about the Wright Brothers and infuse the modern technology and aeronautics aspect into it, you'll find it in the Lounge. If you would prefer to make a day or two of it and focus on the Wright Flyer and the wind tunnel tests, you could do that instead. In other words, these materials were designed to allow you to pick and choose as you structure your own mini-unit or thematic day's activities around the Wright Flyer Replica. We hope you find these materials helpful and informative as you seek to enrich your own curriculum with these supplemental materials. Enjoy! http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/wright/teachers/learning.html We've added some rich content including biographies of some of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Los Angeles Chapter Members biographies. http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/wright/team/ While you are at it check out the Wright Brothers Parallel Timeline in the history background section and the video clips of Dr. Roxanna Green and and Larry Meyn from the "Exploring Aeronautics" CD-ROM in the Wind Tunnel Section.http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/wright/tunnels/ Kids should have fun playing the new wordsearch and slider puzzle games in the kids section and choosing their favorite shot of Mugsy in the Photo Gallery. http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/wright/ Finally I must recognize the contribution of Sharp Student, (summer intern), Stephen Haas. Without his hard work I wouldn't be able to tell you all these new things were online. I wish him great success in his senior year at Bellarmine Prep. CHAT WITH GRANT PALMER
Tuesday, August 11, 9:30 a.m. Pacific: Grant Palmer, computational fluid dynamics engineer When a spacecraft such as the space shuttle returns to Earth from space, the friction caused by the air rushing past the surface of a vehicle causes it to heat up. Grant writes computer programs that predict how hot the vehicle surface will get. Grant's work is part of a larger process called computational fluid dynamics (CFD). His work is important because without CFD, spacecraft designers would have to guess how hot a vehicle would get. If their guesses are wrong, a vehicle would either be heavier than it had to be or get damaged when it returned to Earth. Read Grant's autobiography before joining this chat. http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/team/palmer.html Registration for this chat will begin on July 28. http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/qchats/ [Editor's Note: Grant Palmer writes computer programs that predict how hot vehicles will get during landing. This is good to know because we at NASA don't want folks or equipment to get too hot!] THE MARS 2001 PROGRAM by Grant Palmer The Mars 2001 program is one of a series of planetary missions to Mars being planned in the next 10 years. It consists of two vehicles, an orbiter that will study the atmosphere and a lander that will take soil samples. The project is a joint effort between NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, and Lockheed-Martin. My group here at NASA Ames, the Reacting Flow Environments Branch, has the responsibility of computing the thermal environments the vehicles will experience when it enters the Martian atmosphere. In space there are no gas molecules (or not very many) so the spacecraft just sails along, but in an atmosphere the gas particles hit the spacecraft and cause the surface to heat up. My job was to use a computer program to compute exactly how hot the surfaces of the vehicles will get. Since the project managers work in Pasedena, CA and Denver, CO, I spend a lot of the time in the beginning in teleconferences and sending email. I receive a surface geometry data file from JPL and a trajectory file from Lockheed-Martin. With this input data, I am able to begin my calculations. One of the interesting features of the Martian atmosphere is that it is dusty. The Mars 2001 vehicles are supposed to enter the Martian atmosphere during a period when a dust storm is likely to be occurring. We develop a computer program to determine how much of the vehicle heatshield will be eroded due to impact with the atmospheric dust. The heatshield material is manufactured by Lockheed-Martin and there is a limit to how thick it can be made. If there is a lot of erosion due to dust, the heatshield might not be thick enough to protect the vehicle. It turns out there isn't that much erosion, so everyone is happy. One cool thing about the orbiter is that it will use aerocapture to slow itself down when it reaches Mars. Aerocapture means the vehicle will use the friction caused by the atmosphere to slow down to the point where it can orbit the planet. This is to be the first use of aerocapture in a planetary mission. Then last month something bad happened. Lockheed-Martin experienced a budget cut in the Mars 2001 program and the mission had to be re-structured. The orbiter mission was cancelled and the lander vehicle is still being re-worked as I write this. We are all disappointed because we have done a lot of work on the orbiter and we wanted to see if the aerocapture concept worked. This kind of program re-structuring happens a lot which is why people you see on TV are all very happy when their mission actually flies. SUBSCRIBING AND UNSUBSCRIBING
If this is your first message from the updates-aero list, welcome! To catch up on back issues, please visit the following Internet URL: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/updates To subscribe to the updates-aero mailing list (where this message came from), send a message to: listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov In the message body, write only these words: subscribe updates-aero CONVERSELY... To remove your name from the updates-aero mailing list, send a message to: listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov In the message body, write only these words: unsubscribe updates-aero |
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