LIFE SUPPORT SPECIALIST NEDDA

On April 20, 2010 I went to the Challenger Learning Center in Indiana. I was on the Life Support team. Here are some experiences I had:

Orbiter:

The first thing I had to do was to change the oxygen pipe because the oxygen level was low. Then all of a sudden an alarm went off saying that there was only 5 minutes left until the oxygen ran out. At the two minute mark I grabbed one key to change the oxygen pipes. I made it!! I changed all the oxygen pipes in time.

Now I had to take ph levels from the tap water. I used a graduated cylinder, which is a lab cup for measuring liquids. I poured the tap water in the cylinder, added the chemical that needed to go inside, and put two drops of it in the water. The ph level was 6 so it was right on target. The 45 minute mark was up. Now I had to go to Mission Control.

The Navigation Team was looking for Comet Encke, but they found an unidentified object and decided to look at that instead. The unidentified object turned out to be a comet. We named the object New Explorations.

Mission Control: When I got to mission control I saw a bank of computers. I located the Life Support computer and began to get to work. My partner left a note saying he left off on page seven, so I looked at page 7 and saw that there was an emergency.
The emergency was that the ph level was low, so I had to tell my partner to turn off tap water at Station #1.

Lastly, the Navigation Team found the comet that they were loooking for, and the mission was over. We succeeded!!

NAVIGATOR SHAWN

I went to the Challenger Learning Center in Northwest Indiana. This was the best field trip EVER in Oak Ridge history. My job was to navigate and to find comet Encke.

My job was the best job ever. I found this comet and named it Comet New Explorations.
When I was in the spacecraft I had to type in coordinates, look around in starfield to find constellaitions, and I had a cool headset. The constellation we saw was called Andromeda.

My partner was Jordan from Glen Oaks. He helped a lot. We almost died, but Nedda fixed the airlock with ONLYtwo minutes of oxygen left.

We went to the University of Purdue and had lunch with College Students. This was the best field trip ever.

COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST JOE

When I went to the Challenger Space Center in Northwest Indiana on 4/20/10, I was on the Communications Team, or Com Team.

For the Com Team I had to communicate through a headset back and forth through Mission Control and the Orbiter (space shuttle).Sometimes this was very frustrating.

My other part of my job was to see if the officer of the ISO (Isolation) Team, LS (Life Support) Team, MED (Medical) Team, and REM (Remote) Team had new messages ever 10 minutes.

A few messages I sent were, “ Iso Team needs more chemicals”, and “We see an unidentified object”. Some messages I received were “Congratulations, we discovered a new comet.” And “Oxygen is running out in 5 minutes”.

Some people I worked with were my partner, the Data Team officer, the Iso Team officer, the Ls Team officer, the Med Team officer, the Rem Team officer, the Senator, and the Captain of the Mission.

This was one of my favorite field trips!

DATA SPECIALIST KARL

We went to the Challenger Learning Center on April 20, and it was the best trip I’ve ever been on. I was on the Data Team. The Data Team is the central messaging center of the shuttle or space station. The instructions to my job are very simple. Whenever a message pops up on the computer screen I have to either send it to the Communications Officer to be broadcasted to the space station, or I send it to the person on the shuttle it’s addressed to.

Our mission was to find comet Encke, launch a probe to it, and find out more info on the comet. Sadly the comet wasn’t found so we changed course and found a new comet. That wasn’t the only problem, though. The first was that the oxygen tanks weren’t working correctly and we had five minutes of air left, but literally in the last minute it was turned back on.

The other problem was that when we were going to launch the probe, we hit a meteor shower, but the probe evaded it. We saw the probe launch from the shuttle, too.

The trip had to be the best I was ever on, but wait! We also got to eat at the Purdue University Student Union and I bought pizza with cheese fries and an Oreo ice cream bar.

REMOTE SPECIALIST JAROD

When I went to the Challenger Learning Center I was the Remote Team specialist. On the Remote Team I got to work with the robotic arm. The robotic arm is complicated to use, though. I had to use it to transport meteoroids to Mission Control. It was fun.

After that I had to work in the glovebox which is a self-contained mini- lab, used to protect delicate objects. I used gloves to touch meteoroids and put them in order by numbers in the glovebox.

When we switched jobs I had to fill out a worksheet and work on the computer to test plants to see which plant had something wrong with it. It had chlorophyll. Then I had to see what made it have chlorophyll.

Our mission in space was to rendezvous with Comet Encke, but instead we found an unidentified flying object in space. After careful testing we discovered that it was a newly discovered comet. Because comets are named after the people who find them, we named our new comet Comet New Explorations. We successfully launched a probe into the comet’s tail and brought back many different kinds of information to study when we got back to Earth.

The lunch at the University of Chicago Student Union and everything else was fun. I really liked this field trip.

ISOLATION SPECIALIST ADA

For Ms.Dembek’s class we went on a field trip to the Challenger Learning Center in Indiana on April 20th , 2010. We all had a really great time there.

Our mission was to locate Comet Encke. We supposedly got on an orbiter and launched into space. On the orbiter we had all kinds of different jobs like Data, Communications, Life Support and more. I was on the Isolation team. My job was to measure the radioactivity of oxygen filters A-E. I had to use a robotic arm to pick up the filters and bring them to the sensor of a device that measures radioactivity called a Geiger Counter. It was pretty hard to use the robotic arm but it was also very fun and interesting.

In Mission Control my job, I would think, was the easiest of all. All I had to do was to answer some simple questions on a worksheet. Also my partner, from the orbiter, sent me radiation readings of the oxygen filters that they took and I had to find the average radiation readings for them to see if they were normal, which they were (thank godness).

During our mission on the spacecraft we also had a couple emergencies. The major one was that we were running out of air, but the Life Support team fixed the problem and we were saved.

In the end it turned out that instead of locating Comet Encke, we discovered a new comet and named it New Explorations. This was one of the best field trips I’ve ever been on.

PROBE SPECIALIST KEVIN

Yesterday, we went to the Challenger Learning Center located at Purdue University in Indiana. I was placed on the Probe Team. My job was to put certain items on certain places on the motherboard. A motherboard receives signals from all components. Then I gave directions to my partner in Mission Control.

Our mission was to find Comet Enke and take pictures using the probe I was building, but we found an unidentified object. We tried to find out what it was, but the Navigation team took care of that.

After we found out that it was a comet, we flew into an asteroid shower. If we had launched the probe then, the mission could be failed and the probe would have been destroyed.

We needed to dock and then make a crew change. We went to the Mission Control, while Glen Oaks went on to the spaceship.

After we had the docking and returned to Earth, we went to a debriefing room to name the new comet we found. The group of astronauts named the comet “New Explorations”.
There were problems on our mission, including an asteroid shower. There were a lot of problems in Life Support like no oxygen, and contaminated tap water.
After we finished our mission, we went to have lunch at the Student Union. This was probably the best field trip ever.