UPDATE #13 - Friday, the 13th of February, 1998

PART 1: Florida, Florida and more Florida
PART 2: Web chat with Space Team Online
PART 3: Velcro booties and trained rats
PART 4: The pace builds as we move into the "Prime Crew" spot
PART 5: A typical day for a knowledge engineer
PART 6: Subscribing & Unsubscribing: How to do it!

FLORIDA, FLORIDA AND MORE FLORIDA

What a busy week! I had appointments to talk with some more
new Team members so that I could share their bios with you,
only to find out when I went to their offices that they had
been "yanked to Kennedy!" By now, I'm sure you know that means
that their presence was needed for part of the processing of
Neurolab at Kennedy Space Center, so off they went.

I dropped by to chat with Chris Maese (I promise I'll have his
bio up soon!) and got to see some pretty impressive pictures -
not anything to do with Neurolab, but when you see him ask him
to show you the colorful pictures of his knee surgery. It's hard
to believe how little time he allowed himself to recuperate
before setting the record for the 50 yard dash down the halls of
Building 240!

In the meantime, I have been stopping by (virtually) the Kennedy
Space Center keeping an eye on what's happening. You can do it
too and several ways. Here are some fun things to see:

The STS-90 Countdown page is up - the clock's not running yet but...
http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/countdown/

Each time there's a photo op, there are pictures being added at:
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/captions/subjects/sts-90.htm

If you really want to see what's going on (updated every few seconds)
there's a weather map, shots of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), etc.
http://163.205.195.2/shuttle/countdown/video/video.html

This week many of our local schools are taking "Presidents Week" off
(I think the unofficial title is Ski Week), so I'm going to use that
as an excuse to miss a week with my Updates to you. The real reason
is that I will be in Florida, but not at Kennedy Space Center. My
daughter is swimming at the South Eastern Conference Championship
Swim Meet in Gainesville, and  I'll be there to cheer her on. Go Auburn!
(oops, sorry it just slipped out).

Speaking of Florida, I am now looking forward to returning there in April
for the launch of Neurolab! The purpose of my trip is to take you along
and there are rumors in the works of all kinds of cool ways I can take you
there. Stay tuned for more bulletins.

See you in two weeks,
Linda

WEB CHAT WITH SPACE TEAM ONLINE

Thursday, February 19 at 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. Pacific Time
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/chats

Adapting Astronaut Dave William's comment below, STS-90 is now the "Prime
Mission" in a series of missions that have been featured on Space Team
Online (formerly called Shuttle Team Online). Consequently you will
notice that we have some overlapping NASA personnel who have graciously
participated in both projects.

Janis Davis-Street is one of those people. She is a nutritionist, and is
part of a team whose job is determining the nutritional requirements for
the humans in space flight. Janis is also featured in one of WITN's Career
Video Segments. See: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/video

Quest Chat Host Oran, who will lead you in this chat with Janis. Be
prepared by reading Janis' biography at:
        http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/davis.html

VELCRO BOOTIES AND TRAINED RATS

Did you know that the first rat habitat that went into space was a student
design? It really was! Not a 3rd grader through high schooler as were
ours, but a student on the university level. From what I hear, that design
could have been enhanced by some of our Great Habitat Designers!

What a creative bunch of habitat designs we have received from our
participating classrooms. If you've not given yourselves the treat of
looking through some of these very innovative ideas like putting velcro
booties on rats so they could stick to the "floor" and sending only rats
that had been trained to use "the facilities" provided.

Chris Barreras has been generously responding to the designs, and the
dialog that was going on in debate-nrn has catapulted to the Web as
students reply back to Chris after his critique. Take a look at:
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/events/habitat/designs

THE PACE BUILDS AS WE MOVE INTO THE "PRIME CREW" SPOT

by Dave Williams
January 12-17, l998

The pace continues to build on STS-90 training as our crew recently moved
into the "Prime Crew" spot following the successful launch of STS-89. We
are now about ten weeks from launch and it seems as though there are so
many things to do. Our training team has provided us with a number of
excellent sims to prepare us for the mission to come. The launch date is
currently holding for April 2 and, according to the Farmers Almanac (the
same one that successfully predicted the recent ice storm), the weather
should be good!

This week focused on training for the Ames experiments. The payload crew
started the week reviewing the Neuronal Plasticity experiments and
continued throughout the remainder of the week with the Mammalian
Development experiments. Training on the escher staircase and magic carpet
experiments went really well.

The JSC experiment training included reviewing the VEG experiment protocol
and hardware, learning the malfunction procedures for the video equipment
and practicing our IV insertion procedures. The primary JSC training
activity was a flight day 15 simulation which started Wednesday morning at
7:15 and finished that evening at 19:00. During the simulation we perform
every experiment activity as we would during the real mission. We
also have a chance to sample our shuttle menu for that day to make sure
that we are happy with our food selections.

Rick Linnehan and I also had another NBL contingency EVA training session.
I have included a panoramic shot of the NBL which is so large that we can
train in the payload bay of the orbiter at one end of the pool while
another group of astronauts works on the Space Station mock-up at the
other end.

Before every training session in the NBL we have a briefing poolside to
review the lesson objectives and the procedures that we will be performing
underwater in the suits. In this run we briefed hatch opening procedures
if there were a malfunction of the hatch. The next photo shows Rick and
me, with our instructor Stacie, reviewing the hatch of the airlock on one
of the many mockups.

We also practiced with the center line latch tools and the three point
latch tool, both of which are used to hold the payload bay doors closed if
there were a failure of any of the latches. During the underwater portion
of the session, we practiced performing a manual alignment and stow
of the Ku Band antenna. Following this, we winched in the payload bay
doors to close them and attached both sets of latch tools. The next
training goal was to take our partner and simulate the rescue of an
incapacitated crew member. To do this we would both go to the aft end of
the payload bay and then I would pull Rick along the 60 foot length of the
sill with one hand stabilizing his body with the other. It was an
interesting challenge maneuvering him into the airlock and tethering him
in place so that I could get in and close the hatch. We then switched
roles and my arms got a rest while Rick towed me in.

The remainder of the week included training in the catching experiment, a
review of our flight data file (checklists) and a 4 hour ascent simulation
in the motion simulator. This session included 5 ascents during which we
were given many orbiter malfunctions some of which required us to do a
transatlantic abort or land in Bermuda.

The week finished with my class 1 fit check in the extravehicular mobility
unit (EMU) or spacesuit. This is the actual suit that I would use in the
event of a contingency EVA and it is very important to verify fit and
function thoroughly. The first picture was taken while I was performing
the comm radio checks before donning my helmet.

Once the function of the suit is verified, the mobility is verified by
letting us walk in the suit while partially supported.
The next slide was taken while I was walking over to the Boeing engineer
to give a demonstration of my ability to balance on one foot and lean
forward and backward. That is when you really learn about the importance
of maintaining an appropriate center of gravity!

A TYPICAL DAY FOR A KNOWLEDGE ENGINEER

by Dennis Michael Heher
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/heher.html

Today is Wednesday, January 28, 1998. It has been, for the
most part, a normal day with no surprises. When I was
younger (okay, a lot younger), a surprise usually meant
getting or doing something exciting and fun. Now, surprises
at work can mean frantically writing a document of some
sort that my manager needs as soon as possible (which
means NOW) or finding out I get to travel somewhere,
usually to Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston. But like
I said, today did not have any surprises.

Being a Wednesday, today was my turn to drop Leah and
Patrick (my two kids) off at school. Also since it's a
Wednesday, I carpooled into work today. I am lucky that a
friend works nearby so we can occasionally share the long
drive to and from work. It's 9:25 a.m. when I finally arrived
at my office at NASA Ames Research Center. The first thing
I always do when I get to work is check my email, and as
usual, I had about seven or eight messages waiting for me to
read. None of the messages required any action or response
on my part, so I continue the work I was doing yesterday.

My current job is developing a software program called
Principal Investigator-in-a-Box, or PI-in-a-Box for short.
This program will be used by the Neurolab crew during the
instrumentation phase of the Sleep Experiment. The Sleep
Experiment requires the crew to wear numerous electrodes
which will measure all sorts of information about the human
body while they are sleeping in microgravity. Putting all of
the electrodes on, or instrumenting, takes a lot of work and
it is crucial that these electrodes be put on properly. This is
where PI-in-a-Box helps out. We, the developers of
PI-in-a-Box here at Ames and at MIT, have tried to capture
some of the expertise of the Sleep Experiment principal
investigators (these are the scientists who've designed this
experiment) and put this knowledge into a computer program.

Every once in awhile, I stop my work to read and reply to
email. Today the email came from the scientists and
engineers at the University of California, San Diego
(UCSD), and from Brigham & Woman's Hospital (BWH),
which is where the principal investigators for the Sleep
Experiment are from. Some of the email is from the people
at JSC who are helping us put this experiment together.

At around 11:58 a.m., when I would rather be eating lunch
or exercising, I got a phone call. This call is the "telecon," or
teleconference, which happens at this time every other
Wednesday and includes people from UCSD, BWH, JSC,
and myself at Ames. Altogether, there are 15 of us joining in
on the telecon and we discuss primarily the baseline data
collection session (which is where the scientists collect data
before the Neurolab flight) scheduled for next week and the
MITS, or Mission Integrated Test Simulation, which will
occur later in February. Having a telecon with 15 people
usually lasts a long time, since everybody has something to
say, and this telecon is no exception. At 1:38, or 1 hour 40
minutes after it started, the telecon is over.

I ate a quick lunch at my desk and got back to what I was
doing before the telecon. The afternoon is pretty quiet with
only a single other phone call, a discussion with a colleague
about the Neurolab mission, reviewing my travel plans for
February, and a few more email messages. Since I
carpooled today, it was important that I leave on time to pick
up my friend. At 5:22 I turn off my computers and leave for
the day. I can't wait to get home to see my wife and kids.

Today was pretty much a typical day. When I don't have a
telecon at lunch time, I try to either exercise at the fitness
center here at Ames or go for a long run. Some days I'll
have a meeting or two to attend, but I didn't today. For the
most part, today was typical.