On Friday morning we got a Director’s tour of Johnson Space Center Tour. This was a bit more involved than the Space Center Houston Tour which Catalina, Alejandro, and Leonardo went on the previous Friday. Although I never got to see Rocket Park. 🙁
The Space Exploration Vehicle. This is a prototype of the ‘car’ that Robonaut or future astronauts would drive around Mars (or the moon or an asteroid). What I found interesting is that the Space Suit is external to the vehicle and the astronaut enters his/her space suit from behind from inside the ‘car’. They were driving the SEV around that morning for the reporters who were at JSC for a series of demonstrations leading up to this week’s July 9th Space Shuttle launch.
NASA Space Exploration Vehicle
The Neutral Bouyancy Lab is where they train the astronauts in the water. The pool is about 12 meters deep. The divers get to breath a special air mixture which allows them to stay down at 10 meters for about 5 hours, which is longer than usual. They had a giant U-pipe which simulate the Space Shuttle Payload bay. Now that they are done with the Shuttle Mock-up, I think they should donate it to a skateboard park. They also have several modules of the Space Station in the pool. There is a great episode of NOVA on fixing the Hubble and they talk about the training in the pool. Unfortunately, this was the week they were doing annual maintenance on the pool and they had just filled it back up with water. So no astronaut training we could watch. 🙁
Our visit to the NBL
Shuttle Payload Bay in NBL
Space Station Modules in NBL
The details
A BIG pool
We also got to visit the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. I was told that if the SPMF wasn’t full or reporters that day, they were going to let us walk around. Again, 🙁 But they had mockups of a lot of cools things.
ISS Modules
Destiny, where Robonaut 2 lives!
Shuttle Mockup
We got to see the real Mission Control. They were very busy doing a simulation in preparation for the upcoming Space Shuttle Launch. Truth be told, it is not much more exciting than a game of Pong, where you watch a dot move across the screen.
Shuttle Mission Control
Space Shuttle on the Screen Simulation
We also got to see the ISS Flight Control Room for the American part of the Space Station. This was an active control room. We were not allowed flash pictures as we didn’t want to distract them.
The Director!
Notice the Live picture of the Astronaut on the ISS on the left
The track of the ISS
We also got to walk around the Apollo Mission Control Room. This was exciting as normally one only gets to view the room through glass!
All Vac Tubes!
Laurie is in Charge!
My turn to be the Director!
Yes, Mr. President!
