NASA Co-Op Week 7: Astronaut, Rovers & Robots
NASA Co-Op Week 7: Astronaut, Rovers & Robots
One wheel off the edge of a cliff ten of us were jam packed in a rover sweating like dogs.
Robonaut, Valkyrie, Modular Robotic Vehicle and Small Pressurized Rover are the electrical explorers we visited during a Johnson Space Center robotics tour. Waiting in NASA's Rock Yard was a speedy electric vehicle and a crater climbing rover. MRV is an electric drive vehicle that is has high maneuverability that would score big in drifting competitions. We all got to ride in the Small Pressurized Rover which wasn't really small at all. This giant monster truck looking rover took us in and out of lunar like creators and up a steep Mars like hill. The operator drove us to the edge of the hill and asked, "All right, are you ready to go down?" Grasping to our seats we were all white knuckled. Backing up the rover the operator laughed, "Going down that hill would have wrecked the vehicle". For those few seconds the inside of the rover became even more sauna like. In The Martian movie you will see a modified version of the Small Pressurized Rover that Mark Watney drives around.
Robotnaut is the humanoid robot you see on the news all the time that works in the International Space Station (ISS). Flexing muscles and articulating fingers Robotnaut showed off for us. Robotnaut is very strong able to lift over 20lb of weight in manners that would make arm day miserable. However, Robotnaut is also very delicate able to sense the wight of a nickle on its fingertips.
Valkyrie is a full bodied humanoid robot designed to perform human tasks in conditions unsafe for humans. The idea for Valkyrie came after the Fukushima Accident where more damage could have been avoided if valves were closed near the site, a task a robot could do. Valkyrie is also being designed for low gravity exploration like Mars or Lunar exploration.
Astronaut Michael Fossum talked us student this week too. He flew two Shuttle Missions and a six month long mission to the International Space Station. Before he was in space Fossum engineered ways to repair the shuttle during space walks to prevent any pieces from breaking off. During the space walk Fossum navigated over to the tiles on the space station and sealed spaces and breaks with cocking substance. He mentioned when you look "down" in various directions during a spacewalk you can either see the surface of Earth or a black nothingness. Fossum also was the first to capture a time-lapse of Northern Light and the first astronaut to operate Robotnaut on the ISS.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
Read about the Small Pressurized Rover and its future missions
Learn about Valkyrie's future endeavors
Watch Astronaut Mike Fossum operate Robotnaut
Robotnaut's younger sibling Robotnaut2 operating switches on the ISS
Human like hand motions by Robonaut2
Start your career with NASA and tune into a Virtual Career Fair and hear about internship, fellowships and scholarships October 8th 12pm-3:30pmCT
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Giveaway and Satellite Crowd Funder!
Giveaway/raffle, WIN a FREE telescope! We will select one winner and give away a Celestron 21035 70mm Travel Scope: And help support our effort launch a satellite!
To enter the UGA Small Satellite Research Lab’s giveaway all you have to do is:
Reblog this post (so we can get your name)
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Following the small sat lab on tumblr will enter you a third time!
Following the small sat lab on twitter will enter your a fourth time (just tweet your us tumblr user name at us and tell us how cool you think space exploration is)!
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The Donation Rewards:
If you have donated larger amount you will also get all the benefits of the lesser amounts! Be sure when you visit smallsat.uga.edu/donate that you include your information so that we can get in contact with you!
$5 - You will entered in the telescope raffle 2 more times and will receive a signed thank you card in the mail from the lab!
$10 - You will receive a signed certificate of space exploration from the UGA Small Satellite Research Laboratory
$25 - You will receive a mission patch of your choosing (our NASA patch has yet to be designed but the MOCI patch is below)
$50 - You will receive both mission patches!
$100 - We will give you a UGA Small Satellite Laboratory tee-shirt! Special made for supporters of our campaign!
$250 - We will tweet at you from space! once a month! (or you can control the message that you send!)
$500 - You will receive a plaque commemorating your participation in the development of our spacecraft!
$1000 - We will engrave your name on the side of our satellite!
Remember, you get ALL of the benefits of lower donations if you donate a higher one!
Please Help Us Out! We are partnered with NASA and will be sending a satellite to the International Space Station in 2018, but we do not have the money to build a ground station yet!
We have 2 3U cube satellites! The image below is the patch for our Mapping and Ocean Color Imager (MOCI). We are also building the SPectroscopic Observatory of Coastal regions (SPOC), is this is the satellite that will be launched to the International Space Station!
Donate At: SmallSat.uga.edu/donate!
The Crowdfunded and raffle end on July 31, 2016, after that it will take us 20-30 days to send out all the rewards! Donate at smallsat.uga.edu/donate! Feel free to message us or ask us any space questions you may have!
Donate At: SmallSat.uga.edu/donate!
One of the renderings of our satellite:
Dragon & Tech Development: NASA Co-Op #3 Week 5 & 6
Six weeks into my spring at NASA I can finally summarize my role. I am basically a project manager. I am working with a wonderful team of developers and flight controllers to green light an app astronauts may use on the International Space Station to facilitate stowage operations. The app runs on a device that would make stowage operations more hands free and enable monitoring from Earth. Stowage operations include unloading visiting vehicles such as the SpaceX Dragon and reloading Japanese HTV vehicles to burn up in the atmosphere. To get app approval I need to set up user tests in space station node mock-ups with participants familiar with space station procedures such as mission control flight controllers and astronauts. I observe user testing for other stowage tools and instruct team members to integrate those lessons learned into the app. I make sure the right talents are involved in the development including folks who work in human factors and those who train astronauts. So far this has been my favorite work tour responsibility wise. Even as a Co-Op my efforts directly correlate with the success of the app’s progress.
Picture above is from NASA’s exhibits in downtown Houston during Super Bowl week. I am wearing a VR headset that gave a 360 degree view of how rocket engines are constructed. A rocket booster of the same module of those on the Space Launch System was perched in the middle of Houston’s Discovery Green. Standing in the middle of the exhibits you could spin around in the circle and see sky scrapers draped in Super Bowl LI banners.
WAYS TO GET INVOLVED
SpaceX Dragon, a cargo resupply ship is scheduled to launch Sat Feb 18 9:01amCT, watch here!
Science experiments arriving to Space Station on Dragon to be conducted bu astronauts!
Behind the scenes of the SpaceX Dragon launch and Space Food!
List of launches scheduled at Kennedy Space Center in Florida's Cape Canaveral.
Five minute video of this week's NASA accomplishments.
Real time updates on NASA's missions.
Apply to be a NASA Intern!
Olaf Image from film: Frozen. Dir. Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee Lee. Prod. Peter Del Vecho. Perf. Kristen Bell,
How to Work for NASA: Tips from a NASA Intern
Working for NASA is a life long dream for those who grew up building LEGO space stations, watching Space Shuttle launches and admiring Apollo Era heroes. Transforming this childhood dream into reality is more complicated than handing your resume to the right person but more straightforward than receiving a classified invite from an intelligence agent. I will share the many avenues of becoming a part of interstellar exploration discovered during my time interning at NASA. Ramen to Rockets NASA has two primary avenues for current college students to get involved - OSSI Internships and thePathways Internship program (Co-Op). OSSI (One Stop Shopping Initiative) is the main source for internships, fellowships and scholarship opportunities at various NASA centers. An internship is a semester long program where you work alongside professionals in your discipline, get paid in a stipend and do meaningful work that advances NASA’s mission. Some interns have been invited to join NASA full-time but is not common. A Pathways Internship (Co-Op) is similar to an OSSI Internship except a Co-Op is sworn in as a US Government Civil Servant, paid bi-weekly, receive benefits of a Civil Servant, and flip-flops between semesters studying at college and working at NASA. Some Co-Ops extend their flip-flopping into grad school. NASA’s primary pipelines for full-time Civil Servants is the Pathways Intern (Co-Op) program. I shared in great detail what the Co-Op program is and how to apply in this three part blog series. The phrase “college student” may spur images of a microwavable ramen zapping Millennial but NASA’s college programs are great for every kind of college student! OSSI and Co-Op students are parents, veterans, Millennials, experienced in industry and more. Cold Call Nothing can stop you from simply applying to a full-time position at a NASA center. I call it a “Cold Call” because this isn’t a pipeline program driven process. Go on USAJobs and search “NASA” and pages of positions will appear. Applying in this manner may feel like tossing your resume into a black hole. With stellar related experience in aerospace industry, research, military or start up work this method of applying may just work! I share how to use the USAJobs resume builder in this post. Alternatively, an extreme way to join NASA is to become an astronaut. I shared tips on the astronaut application processhere. Note that becoming an astronaut is the least probable way to work at NASA. Space Contract The majority of individuals working onsite at NASA centers are actually contractors. This means they are employed by private companies that NASA collaborates with on projects. Some of many contractors are Lockheed, Boeing, Jacobs, and System Technologies Group (STG). Projects that contractors work on include Orion, Space Launch System, propulsion testing, and International Space Station maintenance. A private company may have a contract to build a part or system and do so offsite at their respective facility. Contractors that produce a part offsite often come onsite to perform integration tests and are an important part of the NASA team and mission. Keep in mind, if you apply to a private (possibly aerospace related) company you may not have much control over if you are a part of a NASA related project. More recently NASA has been reaching out to small businesses for parts, services and solutions via Small Business Innovation Research. Small businesses can propose projects that can advance NASA’s mission. From Civil Servant on site to a small business working in a small town you can work with NASA and advance space exploration.
You may have heard on Good Morning America that Audio Files from the dark side of the moon "have been made public on the Science Channel series, "NASA's Unexplained Files."" - In reality these files have been open to the public since the 1970s. I'm writing to assure you all that tons of great content and discoveries have been released by NASA. NASA's mission is to advance innovation and share their findings. Even the technical drawings of Space Shuttle are public: http://history.nasa.gov/diagrams/diagrams.htm Here are audio files from all of the Apollo Missions: http://history.nasa.gov/ap10fj/ Here NASA explains the dark side of the moon audio: http://nasa.tumblr.com/post/139801679204/apollo-10-audio-publicly-available-since-1970s Photo by NASA
NASA Co-Op Week 3: Sitting Console
A scene from the New York stock exchange center was what I expected from Mission Control. Imagining the flight director with a thick cigar and eyebrows raised, flight controllers sitting console arguing about an experiment or device gone haywire and astronauts happily floating and Tweeting hearing only commands from Cap-Com that got through. My expectation was fortunately far from the truth.
Mission Control is calm, controlled and direct. The flight director welcomes the console leads, PLUTO, Ops Plan, RIO, ROBO, ISO and so on. Each flight controller checks in with a status and their goals to accomplish. Astronauts join in every morning for a daily operations meeting asking questions about upcoming experiments and big ticket events. Cap-Com is the only position in Mission Control that speaks with the astronauts so other flight controllers let Cap-Com know what needs to be relayed to astronauts. While sitting console with PLUTO I could listen to all the audio loops, Russian translation loop, JAXA, ESA, each console, and other NASA centers.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED:
*Tour the Mission Control Center through Space Center Houston
*Apply for a Pathways Internship (Co-Op) NOW ONLY OPEN SEP 14-18 for Johnson Space Center
*Apply for an internship at one of the many NASA centers.
*Follow NASA on Tumblr
It is possible to have a meaningful internship before college and completing core classes! I share early career tips in the U of MN Duluth Career Center blog: https://umdcareers.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/its-never-too-early-to-intern/ Side note: NASA interns toured the Historic Mission Control where Moon missions were guided from. I wasn't actually the Flight Director of Apollo Missions. However I did sit console in current Mission Control logging tasks during a space walk.
Kindergarten Habitats & High School Design
Along with returning to my studies I have been visiting classes to talk programming, space and backwards design.
Kindergarteners love hands on work and it's one of the best ways to teach a new concept. During "L" week I challenged students to design a Lunar Habitat. This is apparently really hard to describe to a Kindergartener. After showing pictures of a habitat and making ones out of construction paper the idea clicked after building habitats out of Legos, Bristle Blocks, Tinker Toys and Mega Blocks. The definition best used to describe the Lunar Habitat to Kindergarteners is- "A place where astronauts can live on the Moon without a spacesuit on. It provides resources (like water, air and power) that the moon doesn't have." We also made a Yeti dance on Google's Made With Code website, drew astronaut's EVA suits and ate astronaut ice cream.
Once again high schoolers have been assigned the dreaded toothpick bridge project. I have friends who are therapists and they say this project is a family buster. I visited freshman science classes from my old high schooler to talk about backwards design. I shared how backwards design can help them in their bridge project, real life applications of backwards design while chatting about my NASA projects and admitted what I wish I knew as a freshman. When talking about backwards design I described that the design stage of a project should take the most brain power and more time then expected. Once a design is made you need to think about how much time each stage of production will take, what materials you need and if you learned as much as you can about the project so unknowns are resolved.
Tips for high school freshman I have are...
1) Keep alternate forms of postsecondary education and options in mind like Community College, ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps), Technical Colleges, Study Abroad, Americorps and even taking a year off between high school and college.
2) Take honors classes only if the topic interests you.
3) Find a paid internship to replace you generic summer job (even as a freshman). This way you will be paid to do something meaningful that you are interested in.
4) Network with folks in your community that have your dream job. Ask CEOs, managers and other company leaders if you can shadow them. Ask for a tour of a business that you are interested in.
Although I use lesson plans I write about in previous posts some of the best lessons come from getting off topic. Building the habitats out of materials and talking about freshman advice was totally unplanned but still valuable.
WAYS TO GET INVOLVED
Visit a local classroom to read a book, talk about your career, or ask teacher how you can help out!
Teach programming with drag and drop code: https://www.madewithcode.com/projects/animation
Check out AmeriCorps: http://www.nationalservice.gov/programs/americorps
Check out ROTC: http://www.goarmy.com/rotc.html
Find ways to give back to the community: https://www.volunteermatch.org/
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