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Seemingly, the current space shuttle mission, STS-126, has been all about two things: recycling and restoring. The crew has been working almost nonstop to get a new system that turns urine into drinking water to work correctly; and spacewalkers spent a majority of four grueling EVAs cleaning and lubricating a jammed solar-wing joint on the station’s right side. And now there’s good news to report on both fronts. The urine recycling system now seems to be working perfectly. “Not to spoil anything, but I think up here the appropriate words are ‘Yippee!'” space station commander Mike Fincke told ground controllers. Mission Control replied, “There will be dancing later.” The recycling system will be a necessity for supporting the International Space Station’s crew, which will increase from three to six in early 2009. Also essential will be enough power to support the larger crew, so having the SARJ working correctly, the Solar Alpha Rotary Joint which allows the solar arrays to track the sun, is more good news. After Endeavour astronauts worked on the giant gears and replaced bearing assemblies, initial tests found the starboard SARJ working well, with no power spikes or excessive vibrations. So, with the major hurdles on the mission being cleared, the astronauts will be able to enjoy an irradiated, freeze-dried, vacuum-packed Thanksgiving holiday meal on Thursday. And UT readers can now enjoy some of the great images from this mission in the gallery below.
Endeavour approaching ISS. Credit: NASA
The space station crew had this view of space shuttle Endeavour as it approached the ISS for docking. Visible in the payload bay is the Italian-built Leonardo Multipurpose Logistics Module, or cargo carrier. Playing with food. Credit: NASA
Fresh fruit is a rarity and a delicacy in space, and is one of the things the ISS crew enjoys the most during a shuttle visit. Here astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Sandra Magnus are pictured with fresh fruit floating freely on the middeck of Space Shuttle Endeavour. STS-126 EVA. Credit: NASA
Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Steve Bowen work in tandem near a truss structure during one of four spacewalks conducted during the STS-126 mission. Astronauts install a new component. Credit: NASA
The shuttle crew brought up “home improvements” for the ISS and here, Greg Chamitoff and Sandy Magnus move a crew quarters rack in the Harmony node of the International Space Station. This will be a future crew member’s personal space and sleep station. Inside of Leonardo. Credit: NASA
A view inside the Leonardo Multipurpose Logistics Module, which carried up 14,000 lbs of supplies and new facilities for the space station including two water recovery systems racks for recycling urine into potable water, a second toilet system, new gallery components, two new food warmers, a food refrigerator, an experiment freezer, combustion science experiment rack, two separate sleeping quarters and a resistance exercise device. View of the ISS and solar arrays. Credit: NASA
Can you find the astronaut in this image? Spacewalker Steve Bowen is dwarfed by the station components and solar arrays in this view. Shuttle and station crews. Credit: NASA
Following a space-to-Earth press conference, members of the International Space Station and Space Shuttle Endeavour crews posed for a group portrait on the orbital outpost. Astronaut Donald Pettit appears at photo center. Just below Pettit is astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshin-Piper. Clockwise from her position are astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Steve Bowen, Eric Boe, Chris Ferguson and Michael Fincke, along with cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov, and astronauts Sandra Magnus and Gregory Chamitoff. Another EVA view. Credit: NASA
One more EVA picture for you. Here Steve Bowen works during the mission’s fourth and final EVA as maintenance continueson the International Space Station. During the six-hour spacewalk, Bowen and astronaut Shane Kimbrough (not visible), completed the lubrication of the port Solar Alpha Rotary Joints (SARJ) as well as other station assembly tasks. Bowen returned to the starboard SARJ to install the final trundle bearing assembly, retracted a berthing mechanism latch on the Japanese Kibo Laboratory and reinstalled its thermal cover. Bowen also installed a video camera on the Port 1 truss and attached a Global Positioning System antenna on the Japanese Experiment Module Pressurized Section.
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With a waning gibbous moon hanging over the launch pad, Space Shuttle Endeavour lit up the night sky with a spectacular and gorgeous liftoff, right on time at 7:55 EST. Endeavour is carrying a load of equipment for a “home improvement project” for the International Space Station. Included on board are a urine recycling system, a new toilet, a new galley and additional crew accommodations to enable an expanded ISS crew. Next year the station will be home to six astronauts instead of the current three, allowing scientific research to move to the forefront of ISS operations. Just before launch Commander Chris Ferguson radioed to Mission Control, “It’s our turn to take home improvement to a new level after 10 years of international space station construction,” Ferguson replied. “Endeavour’s ready to go.”
The launch was so spectacular that I’ll post more pictures of the launch as they become available. See below for a great ET separation image. And check out Spacewriter’s Ramblings for some screenshots she took of the events. And yes, we Twittered to each other!
Just a few minutes before scheduled launch, it looked like there might be a problem that could cause a launch scrub…
External tank is jettisoned. Credit: NASA
The White Room crew forgot to latch the inner door on the Orbiter Access arm, but the mission managers concluded that it should not cause any problems, and that the mission would be safe to fly. The loose door was visible on NASA TV views as the Orbiter Access Arm was retracted. It just looked a little odd, but caused no problems for Endeavour.
More images:
Here’s one from Bill Ingalls of Space.gs.
From NASA: Endeavour's launch Nov. 14. Credit: NASA
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Just a reminder of this evening’s launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour. And this time, NASA is trying something new. During the countdown you can listen in to live audio of communications between launch controllers and the shuttle, something that is not normally done. NASA Television will provide a continuous “clean video feed” on its Media Channel of space shuttle Endeavour in the hours before its 7:55 p.m. EST liftoff today, Nov. 14. This means there won’t be the regular commentary, just the communications audio, beginning at 2:30 pm EST on the Media Channel. If you have satellite television, check your channel listings. To watch online, go here, and choose the Media Channel. And if you’d rather listen to the regular commentary, just go to the regular Public NASA TV channel. Or watch SpaceVidCast on UStream, if you prefer where you can text chat with other viewers…
The “clean feed” will include live audio of communications between launch controllers and the shuttle but not the commentary airing on NASA TV’s Public Channel. NASA TV commentary will air on both channels beginning approximately nine minutes before the scheduled launch time at the conclusion of what is known as the T minus 9 minute hold in the launch countdown.
During the shuttle’s 15-day STS-126 mission to the International Space Station, the crew will deliver supplies and equipment necessary to double the station crew size from three to six members and conduct four spacewalks.
[/caption]Oh dear. This is a tough lesson in “don’t sell NASA defective goods!”
It would appear that even NASA suffers from common infliction of shoddy contractors. Have you ever hired a plumber to find the leaking got worse? Have you hired a landscaping company who accidentally ripped up your prize hydrangeas? Have you purchased a passive flight releasable attachment mechanism interface plate only to find it had been damaged just before you attached it to your spaceship? Well, you’ve probably hired a dodgy plumber (possibly called Joe) or an unreliable gardener at some point, but these contractor problems pale into insignificance when compared with the life-or-death products sub-contractors produce for the US space agency.
It would appear that one such contractor, a 60 year old man from a space manufacturing company near Houston, attempted to pass a small, yet critical, part for NASA to fly on board Endeavour back in March this year. Unfortunately it was defective, possibly endangering the crew of the shuttle, and now he’s in for the high-jump after attempting a cover-up…
Richard Harmon from Cornerstone Machining Inc., near Houston, TX, was indicted yesterday by a grand jury, charged with fraud involving space vehicle parts and for making a false statement to NASA personnel. According to the charges, Harmon attempted to cover up damage to a part used to secure payloads inside the cargo bay of the shuttle. The damage occurred during the manufacturing process of the impressively named ‘passive flight releasable attachment mechanism interface plate,’ so to cover his mistake, Harmon is accused of welding the piece. His action had weakened the plate by up to 40%.
To make matters worse, Hermon is then accused of falsifying certificates stating that the product had been manufactured to the high standard required by NASA. The local US Attorney’s office said:
“The part was designed to secure cargo to the payload bay of the Endeavour during a flight to the International Space Station in March 2008. According to the indictment, the part, called a passive flight releasable attachment mechanism interface plate, was damaged during the manufacturing process. Harmon is alleged to have covered up the damage by causing it to be welded without informing Spacehab. Harmon is accused of delivering the part to Spacehab without disclosing the damage and falsely certifying the materials and processes used in machining the part complied with the requirements of applicable drawings.”
So what is this passive flight releasable attachment mechanism interface plate anyway? As a subcontractor to Spacehab (one of NASA’s suppliers), Cornerstone Machining Inc. prepares parts for use on missions such as space shuttle launches. The plate has an important function; it secures cargo in place during shuttle flights. Should this part fail, cargo may become loose inside the shuttle, endangering the crew, possibly having disastrous consequences for the mission. It was very fortunate that a pre-flight inspection turned up the fault.
“Had NASA not discovered the damage and used the damaged part as planned, it could have cracked open during flight, allowed cargo to come loose and, possibly, resulted in the loss of the spacecraft and personnel aboard,” said Tim Johnson, acting U.S. attorney in Houston.
Although Harmon has not pleaded to the charges, it’s not looking good. If he is convicted for fraud and for making false statements, ultimately putting the shuttle and US astronauts at risk, he faces a huge $500,000 fine and 15 years in jail.
So the moral of the story is: don’t mess with government agencies, let alone NASA…
Will butterflies in space grow different to butterflies on Earth? (NASA, editing by Ian O'Neill)
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Space biology experiments have just arrived in the classroom. With a focus on hundreds of K-12 students, a University of Colorado, Boulder payload will be launched on board Space Shuttle Endeavour on November 14th carrying spiders and butterfly larvae. The purpose? To provide an educational research tool for youngsters, helping to develop their interest in biology and space science. The butterfly larvae will be studied over their complete life cycle in space; from larvae to pupae to butterfly to egg. Web-building spiders will be studied to see how their behaviour alters when lacking gravity. Both sets of experiments will then be compared with control subjects on the ground… I wish I had the chance to do this kind of research when in school. I wish I had the chance to do this kind of research now!
“This program is an excellent example of using a national asset like the International Space Station to inspire K-12 students in science, technology, engineering and math,” said BioServe Director Louis Stodieck, principal investigator on the project. BioServe has flown two previous K-12 payloads as part of their CSI program on other shuttle flights to the International Space Station (ISS).
This particular experiment will study the activities and feeding habits of web-building spiders when in space, compared to spiders in the classroom. The hundreds of students from several locations in the US are involved in the project and will learn valuable research techniques along with boosting their interest in the sciences. After all, it isn’t every day you get a chance to carry out cutting-edge research on the world’s most extreme science laboratory!
The second set of experiments will be another space/Earth comparison, but this time a study of the full lifespan of painted lady butterflies. Four-day old pupae will be launched into space and watched via downlink video, still images and data from the ISS. Partners in the project include the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, CO and the Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Education Outeach.
BioServe is a non-profit, NASA funded organization hoping to include payloads on each of the remaining shuttle flights until retirement. “Between now and then, we are seeking sponsors for our educational payloads to enhance the learning opportunities for the K-12 community in Colorado and around the world,” added BioServe Payload Mission Manager Stefanie Countryman.
This is where the strength of the International Space Station really comes into play. Real science being carried out by schools in the US to boost interest not only in space travel, but biology too. It’s a relief, I was getting a little tired hearing about busted toilets, interesting yet pointless boomerang “experiments”, more tests on sprouting seeds and the general discontent about the ISS being an anticlimax.
Let’s hope BioServe’s projects turn out well and all the students involved are inspired by the opportunities of space travel. Although I can’t help but feel sorry for the confused spiders and butterfly larvae when they realise there’s no “up” any more (I hope they don’t get space sick).
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Astronauts on the crew of STS-126, scheduled to launch on space shuttle Endeavour on Friday, Nov. 14 will be doing some big home improvement projects on their visit to the International Space Station. This mission will allow the ISS to double its crew size, as well as making sure there will be enough power for everyone living on board the orbital outpost. “It’s the most jam-packed logistics module we have ever carried up there,” STS-126 Commander Chris Ferguson said. “We’re taking a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house and turning it into a five-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a gym.”
The major additions are extra sleeping compartments, another bathroom, specialized workout equipment, a state-of-the-art water recycling system, and a refrigerator. But spacewalking astronauts will also attempt to clean up a malfunctioning SARJ – the Solar Alpha Rotary Joint that allows the station’s solar arrays to constantly track the sun. The huge mechanism hasn’t worked right for more than a year, and astronauts will clean up metal shavings from grinding parts, replace the trundle bearing assemblies and add special lubrication. It’s a big job, and will take four spacewalks to complete, including adding lubrication the port side SARJ, which has been working fine. But NASA doesn’t want to take any chances.
So astronauts will be busy both outside and in at the station during the mission, which will bring 14,500 lbs of supplies and equipment to the ISS.
“We’re going to use up a lot of the new space that we’ve brought up on the past few missions, with Node 2 and Columbus and the Kibo module,” lead shuttle flight director Mike Sarafin said. “The six-person crew is an important step toward utilizing the space station to its full capability.” STS-126 crew. Credit: NASA The crew includes: Christopher Ferguson, commander, Eric Boe, pilot, Sandra Magnus, Stephen Bowen, Donald Pettit, Robert (Shane) Kimbrough and Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper.
But in addition to fully utilizing the space station, the equipment brought up will allow the space station to start depending less on the space shuttle. A new regenerative environmental control and life support system will give the station the ability to recycle urine and the condensation that the crew breathes into the air into pure water that can be used for drinking or to cool the station’s systems.
Endeavour’s commander, Christopher Ferguson, considers the water system the single most important piece of equipment that he’s delivering. It’s important for when the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010, and its water deliveries dry up. But Ferguson said the benefits go beyond the space station.
“This is really it, and it has no parallel. I would challenge you to find any other system on the Earth that recycles urine into drinkable water. It’s such a repulsive concept that nobody would even broach it. But that day will come on this planet, too, where we’re going to need to have these technologies in place, and this is just a great way to get started.”
“Up until this point, the majority of the station’s drinking water was coming up from the shuttle or the Russian’s Progress vehicle,” Sarafin said. “This sets us up for long-term sustainability of the station without the shuttle.”
Nobody will be drinking the water generated by the system just yet – an onboard purity monitor needs to be checked out and multiple water samples must be analyzed by scientists on the ground first. To get that water sample home as quickly as possible, Endeavour’s crew will take a shot at getting the system hooked up before they leave.
The new additions to the space station will be a good way to mark the 10th birthday of the International Space Station on Nov. 20 – 10 years after the first station module was launched into space and construction began.
“We’ll be transitioning to true utilization and setting up for six-person crew at that 10-year bench mark,” Sarafin said. “It’s been a tremendous international effort to get to this point, and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate it.”
Hubble and its most recent science image. Credit: NASA
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The space shuttle mission to repair and update the Hubble Space Telescope has been delayed. Mission managers were aiming for a February 2009 launch for STS-125 flight for the fifth and final shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The replacement component for the data handling system that recently caused problems for the telescope not be ready by February, and now NASA is looking for a May 2009 launch. On a positive note, the “other” shuttle mission waiting in the wings, STS-126 to the International Space Station, is looking good and is go for launch. Current launch date is set for November 14 at 7:55 p.m. EST.
“We now have done enough analysis of all the things that need to happen with the flight spare unit to know that we cannot be ready for a February launch,” said NASA’s Astrophysics Division Director Jon Morse at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The spare Science Instrument Command and Data Handling system unit will replace one that failed on Hubble in late September, causing the agency to postpone the servicing mission, which had been targeted for Oct. 14.
A significant anomaly occurred during testing of the unit and NASA says six and a half months of further testing is needed before the it can be certified to fly. NASA’s plan is to have the spare unit ready to ship in the April 2009 timeframe so as to support a May 2009 launch. sts-126 mission. Credit: NASA
Endeavour’s STS-126 flight, set to launch on November 14 will feature important repair work to the station and prepare it for housing six crew members during long-duration missions. The primary focus of the 15-day flight and its four planned spacewalks is to service the station’s two Solar Alpha Rotary Joints, which have not been working correctly. They allow the station’s solar arrays to track the sun. Endeavour will carry about 32,000 pounds to orbit, including supplies and equipment necessary to double the crew size from three to six members in spring 2009. The new station cargo includes additional sleeping quarters, a second toilet and a resistance exercise device.
Page from Ilan Ramon's diary. Credit: Israel Museum
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Pages from an astronaut’s diary survived the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, and on Sunday, selected pages went on display at a museum in Jerusalem. Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon kept a personal diary during his time in orbit, and portions of it were found about two months after Columbia broke apart on February 1, 2003 while returning to Earth following the STS-107 mission. “Today was the first day that I felt that I am truly living in space. I have become a man who lives and works in space,” Ramon wrote in an entry on his sixth day in orbit. Astronaut Ilan Ramon departs for his flight aboard Columbia. Credit: Chris O’Meara/Associated Press
37 pages survived the extreme heat of the explosion, as well as the 60 km (37-mile) fall to earth and several days of wet weather before they were found. “It’s almost a miracle that it survived — it’s incredible,” Israel Museum curator Yigal Zalmona said. “There is no rational explanation for how it was recovered when most of the shuttle was not.”
Diary pages as they were found. Credit: Israel Ministry of Public Security
The pages were found in a field just outside of Palestine, Texas. On some pages, the writing was washed out, other pages were tattered and torn, pocked with irregular holes as if debris had ripped through them. Pieces were twisted into tightly crumpled wads smaller than a fingernail. Some pages were stuck tightly together and had to be delicately pried apart.
Once it had been verified that the pages were relevant to the Columbia debris, the papers were collected and given to Colonel Ramon’s family. Ramon’s wife, Rona, decided to bring the papers to Israel for deciphering the damaged writing and, ultimately, conservation of the torn and tattered pages.
Most of the pages contain personal information which Mrs. Ramon did not wish to make public. “We agreed to do the restoration completely respecting the family’s privacy and the sensitivity about how intimate the document is,” museum director James Snyder said.
The diary took about a year to restore, Zalmona said, and it took police scientists about four more years to decipher the pages. About 80 percent of the text has been deciphered, and the rest remains unreadable, he said. Page of Ramon's diary that was restored using Photoshop™ and Image-Pro Plus™
Two pages will be displayed at the museum. One contains notes written by Ramon, and the other is a copy of the Kiddush prayer, a blessing over wine that Jews recite on the Sabbath. Zalmona said Ramon copied the prayer into his diary so he could recite it on the space shuttle and have the blessing broadcast to Earth.
There is no information available as to where the pages of the diary were situated during reentry, for example if they were in a pocket of Ramon’s spacesuit or in a padded, heat resistant container or simply held under his leg, as one astronaut suggested.
The diary provides no indication Ramon knew anything about potential problems on the shuttle. Columbia’s wing was gashed by a chunk of fuel tank foam insulation at liftoff and broke up just 16 minutes before it was scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. All seven astronauts on board were killed.
The diary is being displayed as part of a larger exhibit of famous documents from Israel’s history, held to mark the country’s 60th anniversary this year.
Christa McAuliffe. Credit: Challenger's Lost Lessons
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Christa McAuliffe’s life tragically ended on January 28th, 1986 when Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven crewmembers. She was about to make history, becoming the first teacher in space, giving unique lessons from orbit to students back on Earth. McAuliffe never had the chance to fulfill her dream of teaching from space and in the aftermath of the accident, her lesson plans were filed away by NASA with sadness and grief. The lessons were incomplete, unfinished, and most regrettably, they were never were taught. But now, 22 years later, the lessons are alive again, brought back to life by NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill who says he came across McAuliffe’s lessons by accident.
Woodfill has worked for NASA for 43 years as an electrical engineer. Most notably, he helped design the alarm system for the Apollo program. So, on Apollo 13 when Jim Lovell said, “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” Woodfill was monitoring the spacecraft.
But in 1989 Woodfill joined the New Initiatives Office, where NASA employees were asked to come up with new concepts on how to make NASA information public and easily accessible. This was about the time that PC’s and Macs were becoming popular. Woodfill had the idea of taking NASA resources that were public domain, scanning them and putting them on diskettes. He was especially interested in the educational materials NASA had. “In fact, if I hadn’t been an engineer I probably would have enjoyed being a teacher,” he said. “I like to communicate to children and adults as well, especially about science and the space program.”
Woodfill worked on compiling the NASA educational materials, and created the Space Educator’s Handbook. It was on diskettes and free for teachers. Woodfill put the word out and distributed hundreds of them. This wasn’t his day job, however. At that time he was designing concepts for going to Mars or returning to the moon. But he was able to devote some of his working hours to the New Initiatives program and the Space Educator’s Handbook, although he worked on it on his own time as well. He tried to be innovative. “I tried to create a space education encyclopedia with an attitude,” he said. “There are space comic books and coloring books, all kinds of things you wouldn’t find on an erudite space or astronomy site.”
When the internet came into vogue, Woodfill created a website and put the Space Educator’s Handbook online. He tried to keep things up to date, adding new astronaut biographies and educational materials from the various NASA missions. “All this stuff is owned by the American people who pay their taxes to support NASA,” said Woodfill.
But there were a lot of materials for one man to manage it all. “I had file cabinets full of old materials; astronaut biographies, old Toys in Space information and other things on aviation, etc.,” he said. “So last September (2007) I was thinking after working here 43 years, I should try to straighten things up a bit.”
As Woodfill was going through folder after folder of papers he came across an article about 30 pages long that included a study by an education specialist named Bob Mayfield about the Challenger mission. It proposed how Christa McAuliffe’s eight lessons would be performed on orbit.
Woodfill was intrigued. These papers probably hadn’t seen the light of day for over 20 years.
Christa McAuliffe. Credit: Challenger's Lost Lessons
“This article by Bob Mayfield was descriptions only, no sketches or anything,” said Woodfill. “But it was an excellent narrative. He did a wonderful job of writing this, but I’ve never been able to locate him. He went into great detail to consider how these things would work in Zero G, and how the experiments might affect the environment in the crew cabin – if it would be safe. I was so impressed with it. I thought, I’ve always wanted to do something about the fact that Christa and the crew never got to perform those lessons. Challenger was lost and the lessons were lost, too in that tragedy. I thought it would be wonderful if I could resurrect them in some fashion.”
So Woodfill set to work. As good as Mayfield’s narrative was, it was incomplete without McAuliffe’s input of actually doing the lessons in space. Woodfill was trying to piece everything together into cohesive lesson plans that teachers today could use, but it was difficult. At the end of Mayfield’s article was a list of videos that had been shot of McAuliffe, her backup Barbara Morgan, and Mayfield practicing and choreographing how the lessons would be done.
Woodfill thought the videos might be helpful. He started hunting for them, but had a little trouble. These videos would have been recorded in 1985, and 22 years later Woodfill wasn’t even sure they would still be in NASA’s archives. But after a few days of searching, with the help from various people in several different NASA offices, the videos were found.
They showed McAuliffe, Morgan and Mayfield, as well as some of the crew including pilot Mike Smith, and mission specialist Judy Resnick practicing the experiments. They were just short snippets, shot 20-30 seconds at a time in a shuttle simulator or in a KC-135 spacecraft (the Vomit Comet) that provided short periods of zero G to test out the procedures. Woodfill converted the videos to DVD and went through 2-3 hours of videos frame by frame to sort everything out.
Using the videos, Bob Mayfield’s paper and his own background in education in creating the Space Educator’s Handbook, Woodfill began re-creating the lessons for classroom use. Woodfill worked on the project for three months, 2-4 hours a day, some of it after hours on his own time. “I had a desire to see Christa’s work brought back to life,” he said. “There was pride, but there’s sadness and a real loss comes through because you see the crew and you remember that they didn’t survive. That motivated and drove me. It was kind of heart wrenching to work on it.”
Christa McAuliffe. Credit: Challenger's Lost Lessons
Woodfill said Mayfield’s paper covered about 15-20 per cent of all the information needed. The other 80 per cent Woodfill had to re-create. “Bob had a goal for each lesson, but I had to find the theory behind each lesson and create the materials lists, step by step processes, what the results might be and follow-up questions.
For example in the hydroponics lesson, Mayfield described it, but Woodfill had to go to the video and enlarge the frames and examine it very closely to correlate everything. Woodfill added sketches, and since there weren’t any high resolution photos of McAuliffe practicing her lessons, Woodfill captured a few good screen shots from the videos.
Christa McAuliffe. Credit: Challenger's Lost Lessons
Finally, when Woodfill finished putting everything together, he decided the best place for these lessons would be with the Challenger Learning Center, the educational centers created in memory of the Challenger crew. He sent out the completed lessons to a few of the 50 Challenger Centers, including to Rita Karl, the Director of Educational Programs at the Challenger Learning Center headquarters in Virginia.
“As you can imagine, I’ve been looking for these lessons my entire career,” said Karl, who was familiar with Woodfill from his Space Educator’s Handbook. “For Jerry to actually work with the material that was available and put these lessons together in a way that teachers could use it was really wonderful. As soon as we saw them, we immediately asked if we could host the lessons on our website.”
The lessons are now complete and available on the Challenger Center website for teachers and students around the world to use and experience what McAuliffe undoubtedly wanted to share from space.
“These lessons are really perfect for teachers who are trying to recognize the Teacher in Space mission, both Christa’s and Barbara’s and also for getting kids interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” said Karl. “That’s what the Challenger families intended when they started the Challenger Center. Personally, this is a great moment, as if everything has come full circle to get these lessons available online.”
The Challenger Center recently put out a press release to let teachers know the “Challenger Lost Lessons,” as they are called, are now available. “It’s exciting to see teachers starting to use the lessons, and hopefully by the end of the year we’ll have some really good feedback. My feeling is that Christa’s lessons will be really popular,” said Karl.
Included with the lessons are clips taken from the videos of McAuliffe practicing her lessons from space. Christa McAuliffe practices teaching from space. Credit: Challenger's Lost Lessons
“If you watch the videos, Christa’s personality and her excitement really come through,” said Woodfill. “I got to know her from working with this. You really see what a bright person she was and how innovative she was. You can see all the things she contributed to the performance of the lessons.”
Woodfill says he has received calls and emails from many people, including Barbara Morgan, thanking him for his efforts in bringing back the Lost Lessons. “It’s remarkable that I came across them,” said Woodfill. “I think after the accident, nothing was done with them because Christa never got to teach the lessons from space. But it’s appropriate to do it now, because of the technology available. There’s no way you could have given this kind of treatment of these materials even 15 years ago. But now you can watch the videos and watch Christa perform her lessons. So it does resurrect them, it really does. It’s Christa’s work and it gives honor to her.”
Thanks to Woodfill, McAuliffe’s often-used quote of “I touch the future, I teach” was never more true.
Below is the Challenger Center’s video about the Lost Lessons:
Atlantis and Endeavour on pads 39 A and B. Credit: NASA
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Because of delays and complications from Hurricane Ike, the launch date for space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope has been delayed four days until Oct. 14 at 10:19 p.m. EDT. The delay is not a surprise. The crew and mission controllers missed out on a week of valuable training time when they were forced to evacuate the Houston area when Hurricane Ike which hit on September 13. “You come to the question of either slipping the launch or cutting out events,” said STS-125 Commander Scott Altman when the crew arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday to prepare for a launch rehearsal. “All [our training] needs to be done and we have to make it happen before we fly… And that, of course, may mean a bit of a slip.” With Atlantis’ launch delay, subsequently shuttle Endeavour’s STS-126 supply mission to the International Space Station, also will move from Nov. 12 to Nov. 16 at 7:07 p.m. EST.
The astronauts are training for a grueling mission, with five back-to-back spacewalks to install two new science instruments, as well as repair two others and to install six new gyroscopes, six batteries, a fine guidance sensor and insulation.
“The bottom line to me is this mission is really hard,” said John Grunsfeld, lead spacewalker and veteran of two previous Hubble repair missions. “After 109, I thought we’d really maxed out what we could do on a space mission. This time, we’ve added a lot of content with inspections (for the shuttle heat shield). From an EVA standpoint, we’ve gone from doing heart surgery on Hubble to what is comparable to doing brain surgery on Hubble with the instrument repairs. So this is going to be a very complex mission, it’s going to be very hard.” STS-125 crew. Credit: NASA
From left are, Mission Specialist Megan McArthur, Pilot Gregory C. Johnson, Mission Specialist Mike Massimino, Commander Scott Altman and Mission Specialists Andrew Feustel, John Grunsfeld and Michael Good.
Fellow spacewalker Mike Massimino said the crew will do everything they can to be ready, and the short delay will allow the team to be fully prepared. “We’ve been training hard and long and I feel pretty confident we’re going to be able to pull those two repairs off,” he said. “I think we’re ready for them and it’s just to be fresh, have it fresh in your mind, we’re going to hopefully recover those NBL runs and do a little more training in the simulator. But I think we’re as ready as we’re ever going to be to do that. Hopefully it’ll go as we expect it to. There’ll probably be some surprises in there that we didn’t anticipate. But I think we’re going to be ready to react to those as well.”
If the shuttle does indeed launch on Oct. 14, the first spacewalk would be on October 17.
