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UPDATE # 27 - June 5, l998 PART 1: See you in September (or sooner)! SEE YOU IN SEPTEMBER (OR SOONER)!
Why is it that time of year the '60s song "See You in September..." starts running through my head even though I'm no longer on a school campus? My friends who are classroom teachers are packing up their classrooms and preparing for some time to plan for next year. (Who really believes that teachers take the whole summer off?!) They tell me that kids on campus still run around taking silly pictures of friends they'll probably see in their neighborhoods all summer, chanting silly ditties like "No more teachers, no more books...! It's just an incredibly charged time of year. And for me it's a nostalgic time. I'll be saying good-bye to the "live" part of NeurOn and the exciting people I've gotten to know on this project - including you. But where one project winds down, another gears up, and fortunately in this case, many of the same NASA people will be involved! You'll see below from her journal that Liz Bauer from Johnson Space Center is already actively involved in Space Station and plans to join us in Space Team Online. Also Stefan Rosner, who allowed us to share the letter below that he wrote home to friends just prior to returning from Kennedy Space Center, will continue his involvement as part of his Neurolab project will be reflying in STS-95 in the fall of this year. Even when he was too busy to write, Stefan has been our unofficial photographer, providing very special behind-the-scenes pictures. I expect we will very soon receive some tales of his busy times during the Neurolab rush. You'll be able to read them both on NeurOn and on Space Team Online. So NeurOn is actually not finished. In fact, because the subject matter of Neurolab is so rich, I expect teachers will be able to use this project for lessons and classroom experiences for years to come. But this will be my last NeurOn Updates bulletin to you. I hope to see you on Space Team Online! http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space See you in September (or sooner)! Linda SUMMER CHECK-OFF LIST
Respond to survey: if you haven't done so already, please give us feedback by responding to the survey you received by e-mail or the on-line version at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/survey Sign up to receive Updates bulletins for Space Team Online. Keep yourself up-to-date on the goings on at Quest by subscribing to the project that will bring you The Challenge Project in the fall. You can use the easy on-line form at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/sub-sto-intro.html Have a restful refreshing vacation! [Editor's note: Liz Bauer's job for Neurolab was to oversee the preparations for the integration of hardware into four racks in the Spacelab. Below she writes about her involvement in ISS and NeurOn] PROJECTS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION KEEPING ME BUSY by Liz Bauer http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/bauer.html April 14, l998 I did a web chat on Thursday, April 2, from noon until about 1:00. I had every intention of being on time, but of course I was late by about two minutes. I was running through the building saying, "I've got to get to my computer!" I had bookmarked where I needed to go to sign-on to chat, but in my rush I had forgotten and signed on to the NeurOn web site as a user. I had to call the person I had coordinated the chat with and they reminded me about the bookmark. So I was about five minutes late altogether. I was so embarrassed, but the web chat finally began and we had several schools and a couple of other people join the discussion. I think one of them was from Sweden, and when they signed off they were going to bed. (It was late morning here.) A few times I was asked questions I wasn't sure of the answers (like the name of the Mars Rover), but other people came on with the answer. It was cool -- definitely interactive! I had such a neat time. It was so much fun and I'd love to do it again. Now that my work for Neurolab is finished, I am working on other projects. One of my projects is to repackage a Ku-Band receiver into one of the SIR drawers (see my bio). It works with the International Space Station (ISS) Space to Ground Transmitter Receiver Controller to receiver and convert signals - radio frequency, bandwidth, etc. Since I'm a mechanical engineer, I don't understand how it works too well, but I do have experience as to repackaging it into the SIR drawer.. The receiver is being used for video-teleconferencing (video link) to communicate with the astronauts on the ISS. The team I work on ordered these receivers from a company in Florida. After we received them, we needed to check them out. We tested them over in ESTL (Electronics Systems Test Laboratory) in Building 44, on site at JSC. During the testing, we realized we weren't receiving one of the signals correctly. This didn't make the receiver unusable, but we were expecting to be able to receive, among others, this particular signal. We thought we were going to have to send them back to be fixed -- this all takes time -- making the project behind in the schedule. One of our young engineers began checking the receiver and realized that the receivers were getting the signal we were looking for but the receiver's connection panel was mislabeled -- something we didn't know. We are going to fix the labels on the receivers we have, so this will save a lot of time. Since we are getting two more of these receivers, we requested that the labeling be corrected for the connectors. In addition to Ku-Band, I'm also working another ISS (we call it "Station") project which is the Human Research Facility. HRF is a rack of hardware full of medical equipment like mass spectrometer, ultrasound imaging system, body mass measurement device, and a really cool computer workstation with awesome capabilities. These individual hardware developments are within my organization (or group) and I manage them all. My title for this project is Payload Project Manager. I've also been working on my part of the budget for the next fiscal year for my projects on the ISS (Ku-Band Receiver and HRF). This can be difficult and is usually boring. It's like trying to figure out how much of your weekly allowance you have to save to have enough to buy a pair of rollerblades at the end of the year. You don't know if they're going on sale or if they'll stop making the pair you want now. It's just hard to estimate everything that could happen on a project in a whole year's time. A major difference between HRF and Neurolab is that for Neurolab we were developing hardware according to the scientists specifications. We knew the research before starting the hardware. HRF is a "generic facility", so hardware is built before the scientists get involved with specific experiments. We received some general guidelines from the group of scientists supporting HRF, but not directly from the principal investigators doing an actual experiment.. Although it's different from the philosophy we used in the past, it's not a bad way of doing it,. We should be done building our HRF hardware within the next eight months. [Editor's note: Stefan's responsibilities for Neurolab included making sure that the electrical power and signal, air and water fluid line connections between Spacelab and the rack-mounted experiments were operating correctly. His duties included liaison responsibilities with the International partners that provided hardware for Neurolab.] COMING SOON TO A LIFE NEAR YOU...!
by Stefan Rosner http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/rosner.html April 30, l998 Greetings from Cape Canaveral, all! Please indulge me as I borrow your bandwidth (OK, I guess I'm really stealing it) to transmit these thoughts and images your way! We just got the official word that we are targeting 2 landing attempts on Sunday, 3 May at KSC, weather permitting (and it seems that the weather here will be better than at our secondary contingency space shuttle landing site at Dryden / Edwards AFB in the Mojave Desert). What this means, in plain English (sorry, no acronyms) is that the end is near and that I'll be heading back to California to "get a life" again! Consider yourselves warned! I hope that I haven't lost my California residency! As STS-90 / Neurolab is drawing to a close, we are hearing that there is a good likelihood that NASA intends to "refly" the payload on another shuttle flight this calendar and fiscal year as a mission of opportunity based on an opening in the shuttle payloads manifest. We are now scoping this effort for a reflight in the September, and are expecting an official announcement from the NASA Administrator soon after the landing of Neurolab. In any case, I fully intend to take some time off this summer to regroup, become reacquainted with my friends, pay my taxes, and plan / execute a nice extended bicycle touring vacation with Julaine! Attached to this message are some digital images which I have taken over the past weeks, including some prelaunch shots of the Columbia integrated vehicle on the Pad and the STS-90 launch. Perhaps these images will convey some of the excitement which accompanies and usually offsets the drudgery of the 60 - 100 hour weeks which I've been enduring for over 2 years! [ http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/journals/rosner/04-30.html ] I'm looking forward to getting to know each of you again in the near future! SUBSCRIBING & UNSUBSCRIBING: HOW TO DO IT! If this is your first message from the updates-nrn list, welcome! To catch up on back issues, please visit the following Internet URL: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/updates To subscribe to the updates-nrn mailing list (where this message came from), send a message to: listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov In the message body, write these words: subscribe updates-nrn CONVERSELY... To remove your name from the updates-nrn mailing list, send a message to: listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov In the message body, write these words: unsubscribe updates-nrn If you have Web access, please visit our "continuous construction" site at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron
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