Today was the first day of Honeywell Educators at Space Camp! I applied for the program in October and found out that I was accepted March 21, so this has been a very long time in the works. My flight was delayed in Orlando for 15 minutes, but my flight in Atlanta was delayed 2 1/2 hours... so I arrived at the Huntsville airport around 1:30 and finally got into my room around 2:30.
in the Huntsville Airport!
My suite mates Tami, Audrey, and Caitlin, (who I later found out are also my team mates) are fantastic, and from the short time we spent getting ready this morning, I knew we would get along well. Tami and I already knew each other from last year's NASA explorer schools summer research experience, and I'm super excited to learn with her again!
We hopped on the bus at 7:15 and headed to the Space and Rocket Center for breakfast. After a quick intro from Dan who runs the space camp education programs and gave me a ride from the airport, we officially met with our team and team leader Jamie for an icebreaker.
team Columbus!
After meeting the team, which has teachers from all over the world, we went into the auditorium for a talk from Astronaut (and man of MANY other talents) Hoot Gibson. He showed us a ton of photos from a ton of missions and I learned that he was the person holding the camera for the famous untehtered EVA photos. He also shared photos with us from his time in the NAVY and lots of stories from his time as an astronaut.... did you know there's not really a penguin constellation? ;)
untethered EVA photo
team photo with Hoot Gibson
After our team photo with Commander Gibson, we sat down with two other teams for a brief overview of the Orion mission. The mission involves three different teams, one mission control team at a moon base, one team in the Orion capsule with attached lunar lander, and another (my team) in the Rising Star Lunar science lab. The four of us in the lab will be switching places with 4 of the people on Orion a bit of the way through, and head back for earth after approximately 200 days on the moon. The mission is really cool, as it calls for 2 of the people on Rising Star to go outside and play with a rover, and the other 2 (Caitlyn and I) to fix some solar panels on the moon.
in the Orion Briefing
inside Moon Science Lab Rising Star
In the afternoon, we hopped on the bus to Area 51 where there are lots of cool outdoor team building activities. Our group was split up and I ended up with some ridiculously fun people who also worked really well together. We set a record on the whale watch team builder of 11:05! We also apparently came up with an innovative way to get through the first activity and just worked well on the other two to get out of a traffic jam and make our way from island to island. Our guide Reeves-call sign Lemming- through area 51 was fantastic and joined our group for several of the activities. I hope he remembers our record (and the jokes John told to get us there) next time he's trying to get a team to balance on Whale Watch :)
Thanks to Tami for this photo of us working hard to solve problems in Area 51!
After Area 51, we headed to work on designing our mission patch, which my suite mate Audrey just finished putting the final touches on. It really looks fantastic, and I hope we can get actual patches made soon!
Dinner was delicious, as were all the other meals thanks to Honeywell and we ended the day with picking up our flight suits and learning about engaging lessons some ideas about group work in our classroom.
I can't say enough good things about the members of my team or about Jamie our ridiculously amazing team leader. Team Columbus is off to an amazing start, and we've still got a long, fun road ahead.
Good night!
tweets from today:
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