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.