After leaving the Situation Room this morning, we headed back to the hotel for a nap. There was a lunch scheduled at noon followed by a meeting with USRA, University of Space Researchers Association leaders. They are one of the organizations that...lets say.. supports, trains and provides us Fellows with this NASA opportunity.
Getting back to the hotel...aahhhh. In bed, curtains closed, about to fall asleep... and..and..construction begins. Saws, hammers, clickin' and clackin' in the hallway... the floor below us was being renovated. Fortunately for me, if Im tired, I sleep. Its that simple. I had some crazy dreams but I did get some sleep.
After lunch we went back to JAPL to talk about the Educator Fellows Program. They wanted to discuss how we are using Web 2.0 tools. Are our schools supporting us? How are the trainings going? What changes can be made to the program? Good stuff was discussed and tossed around. Flow charts were drawn, scribble through and redrawn.
Next meeting was a 4pm. We were invited to an teleconference orientation meeting. I was particularly excited because I had listened in on the Phoenix Mars teleconferences on my Ipod. I subscribe to many podcasts and listen while I work out. JPL and ASU would present collaboratively. Reporters would post questions and scienctists would explain in minute detail problems, possible solutions and future plans. Now I was at a teleconference in person. I was able to ask the questions! I could see the new images as they shared and discussed among colleagues. It was so very cool!
Here is a quick synops of the meeting.
- The flyby was a success. They were off of trajectory by 2km! That is simply amazing!
- Space craft followed the trajectory… 3 billion miles around the sun.
- Signal strength varied at the correct time during the sequence.
- Images will not be available till tomorrow 2am. ( I think we are going back to see this)
- Data download will begin at 2am and continue through the morning.
- Beginning tomorrow and through out next week will be the give and take of scientific discussions.
- Teams meet in the morning to discuss the data and present their information in the afternoon.
- Soar sailing worked great.
After the update... they pulled out an image that was taken with the wide angle camera. It could have been a picture of the moon and I wouldn't have known the difference. These guys knew the Mercury terrain so well that they could differentiate between craters and scarps and ridges and they saw a crater with a mote??? I didn't know what that meant but they seemed pretty excited about it.
Well its 11pm and I'm tired. My roomate is brushing her teeth which is a good cue that it is time to shut down and go to bed.
