|
   |
 |
|
UPDATE # 5 - December 5, l997 PART 1: 116 Days to Launch! 116 DAYS TO LAUNCH!
When I visit the Neurolab Status Meetings here at NASA Ames Research Center there is a red digital readout that counts down the days to launch. On Tuesday it read: STS-90 119 days to launch. That may sound like plenty of time to you, but the pace beneath the readout is incredible! Leads from the various groups gave reports on status, and all seemed in a mad dash to meet deadlines. Part of the Ames group is at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for Level III/II IVT and ICT activities (See what I mean about alphabet soup!). As an aside, there is a list of NASA acronyms at the NASA Shuttle site: http://shuttle.nasa.gov/reference/acronyms/ In it there are four different translations for IVT. Take your pick! (Hint: you can get some insights on this specific issue and the reason for different interpretation of terms by reading Stefan Rosner's bio at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/rosner.html ) The meeting began with a telephone report from Brad Berch who was at KSC. See Brad's bio at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/berch.html It didn't sound like he would have much time to scuba dive in Florida this week! Our newest participant, Stefan Rosner, is also at KSC and below you will find out a little about the typical day in the life of a Payload Systems Engineer. Hopefully when Brad and Stefan return they'll let us know a little about the excitement involved in "Level III/II IVT and ICT activities." We had a terrific and informative chat yesterday with Wally Welker as students asked questions about the brain. Did you know that the statement that we only use 10% of our brain is a myth? The chat was full of good information, and you can find an archive of the chat at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/chats/archive.html Stay in touch! Linda UPCOMING CHAT WITH NASA PROJECT SCIENTIST
Don't forget to join us for the upcoming chat Wednesday, December 10, 10:00-11:00 a.m. Pacific Time with Louis Ostrach, Ames Research Center project scientist. Louis is in the strategic position of coordinating between the multiple groups involved in setting up the execution of investigations that will be done on Neurolab. This makes him a key source of information, especially about the science NASA hopes to accomplish on this mission. Our chats involve one intense hour, in which students get to participate in live inquiry, asking questions in real time of a NASA expert. Read Louis' bio online at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/ostrach.html, create some good questions and join the excitement. To participate (ask questions), you will need to preregister for the individual chats. The first time only, you will be asked to enter information identifying you and your class. After that, registration merely requires you to enter your ID and password. You can find the schedule of chats at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/chats AN EASY ONLINE ACTIVITY
Student Stumpers is a simple activity that will work on your students' communication skills while challenging them to think creatively. You will use the Internet to have youngsters talk to other youngsters about the Neurolab. It's a great way to create some curiosity about the science of this mission. The basic idea is this: kids write riddles for other kids to solve. Students or (classes working together) will create questions about Neurolab that they think will be difficult but fun to answer. Send your questions to: lindac@quest.arc.nasa.gov and we'll put it online in the Kids' Corner (http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/kids). Other students will email their responses directly back to the question creator who gets to decide if the respondent is right. Then, we'd love to see the results if you'd like to share. We expect the result to be a bunch of kid-to-kid email exchanges that get the kids "mining" the Internet for Neurolab related nuggets. An example question might be: What can snails teach us in space about the nervous system? That question isn't too tough; we know you can do better than that! A terrific source of subject matter on neurosciences can be found at: Neuroscience for Kids: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~chudler/neurok.html and on the Neurolab mission: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/background/mission.html [Editor's note: Stefan is payload systems engineer and works to make sure that the connections of the experiments in Spacelab to the power, data and thermal/environmental control systems will function properly on orbit. He is also a liaison with Neurolab's international partners] A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A PAYLOAD SYSTEMS ENGINEER Stefan Rosner http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/neuron/team/rosner.html November 30, 1997 Perhaps you're wondering what I do on a daily basis when I get to work in the morning. * I research the technical requirements for each proposed experiment (power, thermal and data command/acquisition), combine these to determine the requirements for the "integrated" payload, identify and reconcile any differences between needed and available resources. * I prepare and review documents, such as test and assembly procedures and technical specifications, including those inflight procedures followed by the astronaut crew during the mission. * I travel frequently, both to the JSC in Houston, Texas, for mission integrated test simulations, joint integrated simulations, and also to KSC at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to support hardware integration into the Spacelab module, and many tests to verify that all experiment hardware is functioning properly and fully compatible with the other experiments and all Spacelab and Orbiter (Space Shuttle) interfaces. * I spend much time at my computer reading and writing email messages to coordinate activities and schedules with other engineers and project managers. * I send and receive many FAXes to the other NASA centers and overseas to coordinate teleconferences and test activities. I have a very exciting and "dynamic" position! [Editor's note: Tracy works in Experiment Integration, where he gets experiment hardware ready for launch. He installs the hardware and then tests all the power, video, cooling and data interfaces. All this testing helps makes sure that the experiment will work successfully once the mission begins. Tracy has been a long-time participant in our Space Team Online project, and now joins us as his focus becomes Neurolab.] WORKING HARD ON THE NEUROLAB EXPERIMENTS
Tracy Gill http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/shuttle/team/gill.html November 12, l997 We've had a very busy October and early November here in Experiment Integration at the Kennedy Space Center. In early October, we were putting the final touches on mechanical integration of experiment hardware into the Spacelab racks. Once that integration was complete, we did a few electrical cable checks in each rack, verifying that the power systems would be safe to initially apply power to each experiment facility. Then each rack was lifted by crane up to its designated rack position on the flight floor on one of our test stands. Then each rack had to be connected to the data cables, power cables, air cooling ducts, and in some cases, fluid cooling lines emanating from the flight floor. Once that work was complete, we connected ground equipment cables from our Level IV (Experiment Integration) test system, the Payload Checkout Unit (PCU), to begin test operations. The PCU is used to simulate Spacelab for experiment test purposes because, in Level IV, the racks and the flight floor are not yet integrated inside the Spacelab module. We went on to test each of the Neurolab experiment facilities one at a time, in what we call an Interface Verification Test (IVT). This set of testing began on October 10 and went through October 27. This series of IVTs is an effort building up to the Mission Sequence Test (MST), an integrated test involving all the experiments and the astronaut crew. During the initial IVT phase, we had nine different test engineers running test procedures. Some of the engineers tested two or even three different experiments. I am the lead test engineer, and my job is to review and approve the IVT procedures, to help figure out the best and easiest way to test, and to lead the effort in troubleshooting and resolving problems once we detect them. I control the test activities from a small control room where I have three video monitors to keep tabs on surveillance cameras by the payload, a data terminal to look at telemetry, a headset console to talk to the test team, and a laptop computer connected to the Internet which allows me to look up archived data and access my e-mail. It's a pinnacle of engineer "geekdom" to have all this equipment surrounding you when you're trying to run a test, but you can never have too much information. The Neurolab facilities we tested included the Autonomic Investigations hardware (includes the Lower Body Negative Pressure Device), two Refrigerator/Freezer Units, the Astronaut Lung Function Experiment, the Vestibular Function Experiment Unit, the two Research Animal Holding Facilities, the Body Rotation Device (a chair on a spinning axis), the Virtual Environment Generator, the Kinelite (a ball launching and catching to study human reactions in microgravity) experiment, centrifuge and incubator equipment, the Visuo-Motor Coordination Facility, and the General Purpose Work Station (a large, enclosed chamber where experiment observations will occur through video systems). With this Neurolab IVT testing, we worked six days a week, twelve hours a day. Shew! It's not easy to keep that up for three weeks, but we managed to get through the testing and work out all the problems we found. Then we were ready for the Mission Sequence Test. For MST, I am the test conductor and the author of the procedure. It turned out to be a 540-page whopper. I don't write every little bit of the procedure. The nine test engineers write the pieces relating to the experiment facilities that they have tested, and I write portions directing the order and sequencing of what we do. I assemble the procedure using the test guidelines given to me by Johnson Space Center (JSC) mission management for what they'd like to see in the test. The astronaut crew arrived to participate in the test, and on October 28, we did the pre-test setups of stowage hardware to ready the experiments for testing on October 29. It was the astronauts' first experience with the assembled flight hardware, and quite a few of us engineers here were kept busy that day between doing our setups and helping answer questions for the flight crew. The astronauts also took many, many pictures of the experiment hardware to take back to JSC to study while they trained back there. 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
|
||
|
|
|
