Time to Breathe

It’s now two weeks since my unbelievable visit to Mercury MESSENGER MOC, and I am still recovering. Recovering from information overload, sleepless nights, and missed school work. I am exhausted, but it is a great feeling. I could not think of a better experience to bring back to the classroom. This trip had it all – Real science, great data and images, scientists and engineers who could explain everything to the average person, administrators who were willing to bend over backwards to make things work, and an exceptional group of teachers who worked well together to get the information out. The dedication of all parties left me wondering how this event could not have happened before this. No NASA event that I am aware of involved teachers has involved teachers and their respective communities in real time like this one did. I am already seeing the repercussions in my hometown. Not a day goes by that i am not stopped by people who ask about what happened. I have been contacted by other districts to come and talk to their teachers. My Alma Mater, Alfred University somehow found out about my trip and wrote about it in their Alumni E-newsletter. I even had an old friend from college see the article they quoted and used my site to connect with me for the first time in 25 years.

View from my window

Last weekend I went down to my place in the southern tier of New York to enjoy the fall colors and catch up on my sleep. After three days straight of twelve hours of sleep each night, I finally felt rested. Just in time to start catching up on my schoolwork. My students have been awesome asking about the trip and listening to my stories about how this connects with my courses. The interesting thing is that I have been able to connect everything about the MESSENGER mission with not only my Regents Physics class and my Astronomy class, but also my Physics of the Arts class. While I was away on the trip, my students were working with stop motion animation. Showing them the movies that have been made out of the images that MESSENGER has taken allowed my students to see the real world/non-commercial uses of this science/art. They loved it.

It was not only my classroom that was affected by my trip. Last Thursday, I accepted the Masonic Distinguished Service Award. The Master of my lodge had already nominated me before he found out about my MESSENGER connections. During the Awards Ceremony I was constantly asked about the trip. From what i can tell, this is what NASA needs – connections with communities. Everyone I talk to is excited, from secretaries and school nurses to retired engineers and homemakers. Everyone has dreams and space connects with a lot of people. To have an average guy you know connect with NASA in such a personal way makes you believe you can achieve your own dreams.

Hopefully by the end of this week, I will be totally caught up grading and ready for my next set of activities – Presenting at STANYS and teaching courses on MESSENGER activities. Hopefully I won’t be as winded at the end of those.

Ciao for now.

How Science is Done

I wish I had a dime for every time I have heard that we as teachers need to teach students how to do the scientific method.  I could have earned more than my regular paycheck at times.  When I get students in my class, many times I have to relieve them of the notion that there is only one way of doing science.  Many think that discoveries are made mostly when scientists look for them.  The idea that a lot of science is happenstance surprises them.  MESSENGER has a lot of science that was planned, but just like any other science experiment, it is the unplanned surprises that sometimes bring interesting results.  One of the coolest things i have heard during the past week was when Jim McAdam described the first-ever experiments with solar sailing.  Scientists started wondering about the intense light pressure from the Sun and how it was affecting MESSENGER.  By altering the angles of the solar panels they were able to get data and eventually do course corrections on MESSENGER without loss of fuel.  This was never discussed before the launch and was all done on the fly as MESSENGER was traveling to Mercury.  Using solar sailing they were able to get within 1.6 Km of the target area after traveling 2/3 of a Billion Kms.  Kind of like hitting a bulls eye on a dart board in LA when it was thrown from NYC.  Not bad.

So the next time someone tells you that you are going to use THE Scientific Method ask them “Which one?”

Sleepless Nights

Fellows meeting 3 AM for Mercury Flyby Event

Okay, I am rested after three nights of less than two hours of sleep a night.  I tried to describe the atmosphere at MOC during the flyby, but I don’t think I did  a good job.  There was this quiet tenseness in the air.  Everybody spoke, not in whispers, but with this forced control.  Excitement hung in the air like smoke. The five MESSENGER Fellows were acting like they had each downed a pot of espresso but upon entering quickly bottled up their enthusiasm – just like everyone else.  I have made the analogy that i felt like a five year old on Christmas morning and that is not far from the truth.  I could see the same expression that I assumed was on my face echoed in the eye’s of everyone in MESSENGER MOC.  What was interesting was the reticence at first, the fellows and the MESSENGER people to interact.  I think everyone was nervous about how this historic interaction was going to work out.  But after a while Jim McAdam,Mission Design Lead Engineer, took a couple of us and explained the animations he created and gently explained to us some of the science that the team was looking at.

At this point, I should explain that the MESSENGER fellows represent a wide swatch of the education world, from pre-K through college.  I think some scientists were afraid to try to explain their science and work to people who did not understand it.  And i think the teachers were afraid of the scientists speaking over their heads.  Which is, in fact, why the fellows were here to begin with.  Scientists and engineers are not teachers and teachers are not scientists and it takes a very talented person to be both.  Probably the best example of the teacher/scientists that i can think of is Richard Feynman.  If you don’t know who he is, and even if you do, go read “Surely, You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!”  I wish I had met the man.  His life story has been an inspiration to me.

The scientists and teachers needn’t have been afraid.  Once the ice had been broken between the two groups, the conversations flowed like champagne at a cocktail party.  Laughter abounded and evyone had a good time.  It was a wonderful experience to be able to talk to the people at the forefront of scientific exploration.  I hope it was as interesting to the MESSENGER team as it was for me.  It was defintiely worth a few sleepless nights.

As Mercury Turns

Okay, so here I am in the Situation Room of the MESSENGER mission ops center.  It is 4:414 in the morning and I have had a total of three hours of sleep since 5AM Friday.  I cannot take photos to show because of National Security concerns(insert your own lame joke here.)  You see the facility is also used by our military and they have some issues with cameras.  More and more people keep showing up and currently there are over twenty people with laptps in the room all typing away.  I have had a couple of conversations with the engineers here and you can feel the tension.  Currently the MESSENGER spacecraft has turned away from Earth and is taking photos.  You can see them live at MESSENGER Visualization.

I was talking with Jim McAdams, the Mission Design Lead Engineer, about what parts of Mercury will be seen after the flyby. Interestingly, he showed me a composite image of Mercury with images from Mariner 10, Arecibo’s radar false color images, and MESSENGER’s images from Flyby #1.  The differences in detail was amazing and I will try to get access to the images to post.  Flyby #2 will fill in all the gaps and get real photo images of the Arecibo’s area until we will have seen all but 5% of Mercury’s surface.  And i will be here as that comes in. How cool is that?

I have just asked for photos of the room and people so that I can post them.  Hopefully I will get them soon.

51 seconds to closest approach…and counting

The closest approach was very close to what was expected.  And how cool is this.  The team decided to use the solar panels as solar sails to adjust the spacecraft and its path.  this was never planned for and was done for the first time ever anywhere.  That is what engineers and scientists can do on the fly when given a chance – make history doing the previously impossible.

Louise Prockter Instrument Scientist for MDIS, explained to me about the compression routines used for the data – or really the lack of them.  Very little compression is done since compression loses data.  Interesting note is that MESSENGER only has an 8 Gig storage capability which has to be downloaded before more information can be gathered.

On October 15th the mESSENGER satellite will be traveling at 148,000 miles per hour relative to the sun.  This will be the second fastest speed ever for a manmade object.

Thank You Maia!

I have just got off the plane for this trip and I am waiting for another MESSENGER Fellow to fly in from Manchester. I thought I was done blogging for the immediate future until something happened with the other Fellows or at mission control. However, I was proven wrong within 10 minutes of shutting down my computer so that I could board my plane. After taking my seat,(the middle seat between two other gentlemen – and I am not a small guy) I found myself sitting behind THAT CHILD. You know the one, the one who’s decibel range was between 100 -115 Db at all times and moves so often that there are friction burns on the seat after they leave. Every plane has one. I think it’s required by FAA regulations. I remember one Christmas when my usually energetic sister-in-law deplaned after a 4 hour flight from Oakland to Rochester – where her young daughter had been THAT CHILD. I don’t think I pitied anyone so much in my life as I did at that moment. This girl was accompanying her sister, parents and grandparents to Disney World. And she was seated in front of me next to the window with her grandparents. I was not worried however. I always fall asleep within minutes of getting on a plane. I am blessed by the ability to fall asleep anywhere, any-when without the worry of being awoke by noise– usually. Thank goodness it did not work this time.

The five year old girl, Maia was her name (I knew her name within the first few minutes on board) was a bundle of energy. She wanted to know everything. I at one time counted at least five questions that she asked in less than 30 seconds. To their credit, her grandparents (especially her grandmother who was seated next to her) tried answering each one. It was wonderful to watch and listen to. Such unbridled enthusiasm and excitement was awe inspiring to watch. I have often joked that all children have this lust for learning and that it must be beaten out of them because by the time they get to me in high school, they just want out. I do my best to bring this excitement back out but I don’t always win. I never heard a peep out of Maia’s sister who was sitting in front of Maia, so I cannot say whether or not she was excited. However I did a lot of looking around, especially after Maia would shriek at something new she saw through the window. On a fully loaded plane, I did not see one other person enjoying the Maia Show. This was too bad. Because there was nothing more important going on on that plane. I was in desperate need of sleep and yet I continued to eavesdrop (it was not hard.) Upon liftoff Maia yelled out “I can see the whole world from here!” And her parents and grandparent tried unsuccessfully to “Shhh” her. But as I thought about what Maia had yelled I thought about the wonder in her voice. Here I was going to be a part of a historic mission with NASA in less than 24 hours and I could only hope to have that much excitement in my voice when I see the first photos of Mercury.

As I looked around the plane and saw the passengers faces I felt sorry for them. I often wonder what is happening in people’s lives that they feel the need to go through life with a scowl on their face. One of the proudest moments in my life was when a teacher I respected, but was a suit and tie ex-marine type of teacher, became an interim vice principal. When we met after his formal observation of me, I was incredibly nervous. You see, I am a geek-shirt Friday type of teacher, often unshaven and many times with unkempt hair. I was terrified because I really respected his opinion and I knew he was not overly sympathetic to my style. I needn’t have worried though. The first thing he said to me was that in his entire career (30+ years) he had never seen someone smile so much while they taught. He said my smile was infectious and he watched as my students caught it. His comments brought me to the memory of all the times people had commented on me and my smile. I have had a lot of things happen to me in my life, but nothing gets me down. I think I am that way because of the number of times I have been near death (and it is a lot.) During my flight, I watched Maia’s grandparents smile as they tried to reign her in. I thought of my own grandparents when they were alive and my wife’s. There is something about becoming a grandparent that allows that inner child and excitement and wonder back out. Maia’s grandparents were experiencing not only her sense of wonder, but their own. I watched as Maia,s grandfather started to playfully tease her mother, who was seated in front of him. He would tickle the back of her neck or pull her hair – and Maia’s mom loved it. When I saw this family’s interaction I knew I had to write about them, and so at the end of the flight I introduced myself and explained that I would be blogging about their granddaughter. I knew I sounded strange but I wanted to let them know that their little one had such a positive effect on a perfect stranger.

Thank You Maia, and when I shriek “I can see the Whole World from here!” at MESSENGER mission control it is dedicated to you and your wonderful family. I hope you have a great time at Disney World and never lose your sense of awe and wonder.

Riding High

Okay, here I sit at 6AM in the morning at the Rochester Airport with less than two hours sleep and I am not tired at all.  You would think that after the week/month/year that i have had, my body would just shut down for a month and demand that I relax.  I pride myself on my ability to just sit back and relax at the drop of a hat.  Yet I have not been able to do that much this year.  You see, as I keep telling people, I am having a good year.  every time I turn around something new and amazing happens to me or the people close to me.  I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and when it does my fall will be great.  But, for now I plan on living and acting like the nine year old boy who keeps running back and forth through the terminal in front of me.  He goes from the windows on one side of the concourse to the other looking for planes landing or taking off.  Right now, he is five feet away from me with his nose pressed up against the glass and his hands shading his face, wildly calling his less excited twelve year old brother (who is obviously trying to look calm, coll and adult abou this experience but is leaking excitement like an overfilled hotdog with everything) to come look at the lane revving ts engine.  I am this boy right now.  My childhood dreams are coming true.  I am going to NASA’s MESSENGER Mission Operations Center for a major spacecraft event.  I am so excited that as I wrote that last sentence, I started seeing the page through tears.  I cannot believe it.  The only thing I can compare it to, is the births of my daughters or my wedding day. But I didn’t cry then, so why am i tearing up now?

Maybe it’s because I thought I left my NASA dreams behind when I decided a week before my college graduation that I would not persue my goal of becoming an astrophysicist.  I decided to become a teacher instead.  So many people have asked me “why?” over the past 24 years.  I still cannot answer why I made that decision.  I only know that I have never regretted making it.  Not Once.  Not when all my professors tried talking me out of it.  Not when EVERY teacher at the school where i student taught used lunchtime to talk me out of going into teaching.  Not when I stupidly boasted as an answer “I’ll be starting at $21K”  to a teacher who had asked how much money I thought I would be making as a starting teacher.  (He then replied that he had been teaching for 11 years and just cleared $19K.) @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>  Quitting never entered my mind when i started teaching in the city of Rochester and watched many new teachers fall by the wayside.  I never questioned whether I would go back to the classroom when, five years into teaching, I came down with cancer, lost the roof of my mouth, and had to learn how to speak again. I was back in the classroom only a few months after students broke my back – albeit I had a full body brace and a cane, but I was back where I needed to be. In 23 years of teaching, the classroom has been a place where I come alive and share my excitement and wonder with my students. I don’t know how effective I have been. I don’t think I have inspired any astronomers or physicists, but I know I have shared mself with thousands of students and I can only hope that I had some tiny impact on them.

So it is with that in mind that I sit here with ants in my pants (showing off my age with that comment.) I have not had a moment to think a rational thought all week. I should be running on empt right now but my brain won’t let me stop. It has been such a busy week doing my normal teaching duties in addition to talking to the media, preparing lesson plans, meeting with students to explain on an individual basis how projectile motion works, shopping for the trip, packing for the trip, and finding out that my team got accepted for the second round of writing for a $1.5 million dollar NASA grant. I was so busy that I did not take time to get excited that I was awarded this years Science Teachers Association of New York State Excellence in Teaching Award for High School. It is a huge honor and yet, I have not had time to get excited about it. My whole world has been this trip.

I get to fulfill my dream. I get to work with people from NASA. I get to be part of the team that sees part of the universe which has never before been seen by human eyes.

I am having a good year.