Miss B., Busy Bee: 07/06/12

Friday, July 6, 2012

To the Moon...and Back!

It's been a couple of months since I last posted, and boy have I been busy! Don't worry, I'll blog about some fun stuff we did at the end of the year, but for now you get to see my fun adventure at Space Camp!

I was one of 170 teachers selected (out of thousands who applied) to attend Educator Space Camp at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, on scholarship from Honeywell.

Here are the 10 teachers from New Jersey. We outnumbered every other state!

Here we are with Robert "Hoot" Gibson, a retired astronaut. He is really awesome!

Team Kibo was tons of fun, and we definitely learned a lot from each other.

We simulated a water reentry to Earth (except at a MUCH lower G force) by ziplining backward off a 50 foot tower into water.

Here we are on Space Shot, learning how it feels to be shot toward the sky in a rocket...only 1 G of force...but it was still scary!

I made some awesome new teacher friends (here are my roommates from the UK/Japan, Arizona, and Vermont).

We completed a moon landing mission and a shuttle mission, completely gaining insight and respect into the precision required to be an astronaut.

I was a mission specialist who performed an EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) - fixing a broken window on a capsule on the moon.

I didn't even have a complete pressurized suit (you can see my hands were exposed - that would kill an astronaut in space) and it was still difficult!

My job in the shuttle mission was under Mission Control - CATO (Communications and Tracking Officer).

We got to play around in different simulators and see real objects that were in space or used for tests.

Here's the MAT (Multi-Axis Trainer), the thing everyone thinks of when they hear of Space Camp. They tell you that you shouldn't get sick because your center of gravity doesn't change...