Post-launch monitoring in the TMA

Meanwhile back at Ames Research Center (and I am!), I went to visit the Test Monitoring Area (TMA). This area is located just above the HighBay. You may recall that is the high-ceilinged room where we watched Lorenzo assemble the waste trays. Lorenzo waved up at me. It was good to see him back after a long absence due to a family emergency. Mickey Farrance (someone I'd not met yet) was TMA monitor on duty. I introduced myself and explained my reason for being there.

Much like the User room at Kennedy Space Center, this room is lined with computers. Some are simply work stations for the many reports that are generated and some are data feeds from the Ames-based experiments onboard the shuttle. Above one of the doors is a digital clock reflecting mission elapsed time (hint: I took this photo on flight day 13). There are four large monitors in the room from which you could sometimes watch the crew onboard the shuttle doing their activities or replays of crew broadcasts, but more often the map indicating where they were located at that moment . Each person in the room had a head set with which to stay in touch with the many other areas that were monitoring activities. Because they had all of the channels open on the headset I was wearing there were times when all I could hear was a cacophony of multipitched voices, none of which made much sense, and then total silence for stretches of time.

It was fun to see familiar faces in this new setting: BJ Navarro (pictured at left) was just about to finish her 12-hour shift and Chris Barreras (at right) was about to begin his through-the-night 12-hour shift. During this late night shift Chris would primarily be monitoring the functions of the RAHFs onboard and planning for the next day. Apparently each day a new document, entitled STS-90 Execute Package Flight Day #, is faxed to the shuttle giving weather conditions in the event of landing and any changes to the Payload Crew Activity Plan (PCAP).

I hung around long enough to get a feel for what was happening and to realize that either they would have to put me to work or I could gain 20 pounds. There were nibbles to snitch everywhere, and I can resist almost anything but chocolate! I got to watch Mickey and Chris tour a group from Space Camp who came over to understand the operation of the monitoring area for the purpose of explaining it to kids attending Space Camp. I watched Chris explain the items on the RAHF that the monitor was keeping track of and listened as he patiently answered questions. I really think he would make a terrific teacher! They expressed interest in NeurOn and I was able to give them a little tour through our site before they left. I thought it was nice of Chris to wear his NeurOn T-shirt for the occasion. I decided to call it a night so that I could return the next day when the crew was awake.

Thursday morning, bright and early for me, I showed up again in the TMA. BJ and Cecilia Wigley had already been there since 4:00 a.m. when Chris went home. Already the place was abuzz with activity. I chatted with Cecilia about the situation of the unexpected number of the neonates (baby rats) that had died seemingly due to maternal neglect. NASA Veterinarian Dr. Joe Bielitzki explained to the press it was unclear why this happened. This is not the first time that this age rat has flown in space so there was a good feeling for how they would fare. It seems that it's unclear whether the problem is behavioral or physiological on the part of the dam (mother rat), whether she had trouble finding an area to gather the neonates so they could have access to nursing, or whether she had simply stopped lactating; but a massive effort was going on to figure out how to continue feeding the remaining neonates. It was a terrific endeavor and showed off well the ability of these folks to spring into action for almost any contingency! These are some of the issues involved:

Naturally there was no baby rat formula and baby rat bottles onboard and the immediate issue was to find what existed on the shuttle that could be used. There were all kinds of suggestions: crew food, diluted rat bars (but how?), a combination of both of those ideas? I even heard a suggestion of salmon paté! (A true indication that even in pressure this team can keep its good humor.) And how would the food be dispensed? Naturally, it became BJ's team's issue to see if there was an adequate syringe available to use to hand feed these tiny critters. There were issues like: If the rat food bars were to be used, how were they going to crush them and add liquid? (Consider the reduced gravity problems!). True to form in planning for a contingency, the ground team simulated the process locally and finally when they were convinced of the best process forwarded digital pictures of the process being performed to the crew onboard the shuttle. The final decision was to form a paste of the food bars with warm water, something I heard affectionately termed Mush a la Maese. The science report that is received at the end of the day reported that most of these young rats "are stable and eating well with a few being tended to by Columbia's astronauts." Cool!