Day 5: Wednesday

I am writing this as a group of us sit in Huntsville Airport waiting for our flight to Dallas Fort Worth. It's rather nice to be here with others from camp instead of just by myself. We are lucky as many of our colleagues were transported to the airport at 4am this morning; we had a 2pm bus so have been able to hang around the Space and Rocket Center just visiting exhibitions again, going on the Mars Rover and Space Shot ride (gulp! Weightlessness!) plus visiting the gift shop for about the 40th time!

Yesterday we completed the X-prise challenge; same thing as an Egg Drop, with criteria and budget to consider. Our crew trainer was dubious of the quality of our lunar lander design, but it worked perfectly! We also had a lunar rover which had to then roll as far as possible, all without damaging the egg. 

We were fortunate to hear a presentation from Homer Hickam, the author of "Rocket Boys" - which has been made into the movie "October Sky". He is also an engineer who has designed rockets and trained astronauts. We even have signed copies of the book!

Finally we had our graduation and celebration dinner.  It was just incredible to walk into the Davidson Center for Space Exploration after it was closed to the public and enjoy the company of our fellow graduates and trainers sitting under that massive Saturn V rocket! There was an amazing ambience as the sunlight disappeared and the museum lights came on. The band that played for us to dance to was fabulous...sort of a shame to have to leave and go pack!

So my time in Alabama is at an end...for now; maybe I could think about doing the Advanced Space Camp??

With all the different forms of communication available, it is great that it doesn't feel as though there is no more. Team Tranquility will continue to stay in contact; there are way too many photos to ever forget my fabulous team mates! 

Once home, I will work to add photos that I haven't been able to during this week. Sometimes I have had to push myself at midnight to post to the blog, but I am feeling very glad that I did. It would be almost impossible to remember everything now!

Hopefully our flight out of Huntsville will be far less eventful than our flights (yes, it's a plural!) into Huntsville! Fingers crossed for 1. No broken panel on the leading edge of a wing that they hammer until it's irreparable, or 2. All engines continue working and we can land without a cavalcade of fire engines to meet and greet!

Most of all, I am looking forward to seeing Mark, Lucy and Jack again. It's been tough not to be able to have much contact at all, thanks to a very full schedule and awkward time difference. See you in about 25.5 hours!!

"Commander, this is Capcom. Your mission is complete and has been a success. Please return to your regular life and remember all the wonderful people you have met and things you have done. Over and out."

Day 4: Tuesday

Another busy day! 

I've extracted DNA from a strawberry and designed a mining facility on the Moon. NASA gave us a huge batch of resources and some very good information for classroom ideas.

We launched our rockets this afternoon: that was really spectacular! My rocket has to stay here because we used gunpowder to set it off and the residue isn't allowed back through customs. My crew trainer us going to hang onto it and launch it many more times instead.

We created Ablative Shields to protect a raw egg. The Ablative Shield protects capsules from burning up in re-entry. Same idea as the black tiles on a Space Shuttle.  We has to choose from a range of layers; things like cork, aluminum foil, cotton wool, paper, spack filler. The shield could only be 1cm thick and had to protect the egg from 3500degree (Fahrenheit) heat for 3 minutes. Somehow our egg survived uncooked and unexploded!

We completed our Orion Mission tonight. 2.5 hours of stressful situations throughout a launch and land to the Moon. In these missions there are always some scheduled "anomalies", but we ended up with a few real ones, technically! However, we battled on to complete the mission on time for splash down, despite the computer screens in a few positions going blank. Computer screens at Mission Control tend to be important!

Saturn V Replica: the real one is inside!

Day 3

What a great start to the day! Zip-line from a tower into the water and the hello-dunker! Both activities designed to simulate escaping from a helicopter. The helo-dunker is a big cylinder, like a barrel shaped helicopter, that rolls when it meets the water and fills with water. Good to know how to escape!

Next into IMAX to see Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon. It was an interesting look nyo the history of the Moon and what may be ahead. 

Our Orion Mission, which we trained for today, is set up as what NASA is really looking towards doing in the future.

This afternoon we went on the astronaut simulators: the one-sixth gravity Moon chair and That Spinning Thing"! So much fun!

A visit to the Davidson Center on site was incredible.  It houses a real Saturn V rocket - such an immense size! This is a terrific museum with a heap of hands-on exhibits and capsules / capsule simulators to climb in.  A few are a little tricky to climb back out of....such small spaces to survive for days!

Most of today's photos are stuck on my camera so will have to add them later on.

This has to be the most fabulous PD event I will ever have the privilege to attend! 

Atlantis

All those buttons and switches!

EVA in progress

Commander Me and Pilot Kathy in charge of Space Shuttle Atlantis

Day 2: Sunday

Team Tranquility completed the Area 51 Low Ropes challenges with great success first thing this morning. We proved to ourselves and the trainers that we communicate exceptionally well as a group.

After lunch it was time to prepare for the Shuttle Mission! I had woken up at 3am, thinking about all those buttons and switches... For two hours we proceeded through the sequences, sometimes behind time yet able to catch up and dealing with anomalies that occurred. I did manage to land Atlantis as commander, but rather than use a runway, the grass worked just fine! Our parachute didn't open either, but we still stopped all safe and sound. It was such an incredible experience!

We built our rockets during the afternoon and will launch them in a couple of days.

Day 1: Saturday

Wow, straight into activities with a fabulous astronaut talk by Hoot Gibson! Just amazing to hear about his experiences within his incredible career with unreal photos. 

Shuttle Mission Hardware initiation taught us (in theory) how to fly a space shuttle in 90 minutes...not that it seemed to help much in this afternoon's practice session with me somehow ending up as Commander! There are so many buttons on so many panels with so many names! Hopefully Team Tranquility will be able to pull it all together with a successful launch and landing, plus all the other mission challenges.

Arrival Day

The two Australians had a few tough moments on their trip after arriving into Dallas Fort Worth! Our first flight to Huntsville saw us offloaded because a wing piece was faulty and unable to be fixed. The next plane managed to take off, but lost engine power in one engine so after 30 minutes we returned to DFW, landing with loads of fire engines running along the tarmac, and were sent to hotels at 2:30am. Fortunately the third plane managed to make the trip!

Everybody has checked in the Charger Village at UAHuntsville, ready to begin tomorrow with a 7:15am pick up to head up to the Rocket Center where all our activities are being held. It's only a few minutes away and today we have been taken up there for meals. 

Even though I can only see the rockets from a distance for now, it is still completely amazing to see.

Afternoon tea at our lovely neighbours' house! Complete with a fabulous rocket ship cake. Thank you so much, Marc and Barb!

Rocket Afternoon Tea

The First Step...

In March I was fortunate to be awarded a Honeywell Educators Scholarship to attend Space Camp at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.  Maths and Science teachers from all over the world will be joining together for two one-week camps for an incredible professional learning experience.

From June 14 until June 20, I plan to be posting about the activities we are participating in, including some astronaut simulations!

At the moment, I have been collecting a few things to take and share: clip on koalas, TimTams and Vegemite.  I wonder which will be the favorite?