Day 2: Helping with an unplanned event.

Well, after yesterday, I needed to really get down to business getting to know what's happening with our NeurOn team members at work. I got up early to join the Ames Research Center Team in their daily meeting The meeting was shorter than the 27 page schedule covering the next four days: L-8 to L-5.

After the meeting I got to chat further with Chris Barreras about his report. Chris got very little sleep last night. It seems that in loading the RAHFs into Neurolab, in the testing process, air bubbles were detected in the water line. My understanding is that some think that air bubbles might discourage an animal from returning to the lixit (the outlet for water in the habitat). Chris and others spent a great deal of time purging the system, taking care to measure all water put in and water removed in the process. It's very important that no water removal be construed as leaking, because of potential damage to the many systems aboard already. Two RAHFs means much work.

Beyond the RAHFs, now Chris had what he referred to as an "unplanned event," something that can throw a 27 page schedule into confusion! He needed to purge the water lines of the RAHF cages (24 in all) to remove any air bubbles, and guess who volunteered to help. I think I'm getting to know these habitats pretty well!

I tagged along with Chris to the O&C (Operations and Control) Building where a lab had been set up for the purpose. As usual, Chris was terrific about showing me around and introducing me to folks I had not yet met. One of the new acquaintances, Frank, was getting things ready for the process, so in the meantime, Chris took me on a little tour.

The first "hurdle" was to get me the necessary permission to join him on a brief escorted trip through the High Bay where so many of the pictures we have in the photo section of NeurOn were taken as Neurolab underwent all those post shipment hardware tests: making sure everything connected and fit as planned, testing the circuits and systems over and over prior to installing into the racks in Neurolab and then into the shuttle. I thought it might be fun to show you the multiple badging that some people have to go through to be cleared for all sorts of activities at KSC. Believe it or not, there are almost as many badges hidden as showing in the picture! All I needed was a TAA (more alphabet soup) Temporary Area Authorization. The badge title is followed by eleven lines of 9 numbers each. Out of all of those, I'm only authorized for three!

	Once we were inside this huge area, it looked very familiar. The pictures that we had already gotten from our team members and from the KSC website were a very good representation of this huge hangar like area (still inside O&C). I was still awed by the size of things. The racks that can be seen in the pictures were bigger than they looked, and you can see, especially if you click on the image to see the enlargement, Chris is standing next to the enormous transporter that carries Spacelabs like Neurolab to where it can be installed in the shuttle. To his right you can see the cab in which a driver sits to guide this vehicle.
	We continued from there to the User Room. This is the place where flight monitoring goes on. Not only do they watch the multiple monitors that connect them visually to the shuttle, but you can see the computer monitors that send data on the various experiments that are on board. This is one of several spots including Johnson Space Center and Ames Research Center where monitoring will take place continuously while STS-90 is on orbit.

Back to the lab: Frank was doing a trial run, I found out later, for the benefit of a NASA quality inspector who was watching each step as they were performed on one cage. It was a multiple step process, and I'll give you as brief a summary as possible of what I did for the rest of the afternoon. (We completed one of the racks - one still to go).