So I have spent this week in Palmdale, CA at the NASA Aero Institute with the Teachers In Space Workshop.
Aero Institute in Palmdale
On Monday, Ed Wright, the Director of Teachers in Space gave us an introduction to the program and the goals for the week. We are building several component of an experiment to fly on the Excelsior STEM mission, which will fly on the XAERO spaceship being built by Masten.
We also had two very interesting Remote Sensing talks. Chris Jennison, is the NASA Dryden director of Remote Sensing. He talked about Landsat and developing remote sensing technology cameras and observation techniques such as Thematic Mappers.
LK Kubendam talked about the NASA Flight Opportunities Program and the different commercial spacecraft options which are being developed.
Tom Mace is the Director of Airborne Sciences at NASA Dryden and he talked about some of the different type of spacecraft used in Remote Sensing. The WB-57 from Johnson Space Center was in the hanger next to me at the Reduced Gravity Flight Workshop.
WB-57 in the hanger in Houston next to my Teaching From Space workstation
Pace also talked about the ER2, which is the NASA version of the U2 spyplane.
ER2, the NASA version of the U2 Spyplane
Ed Wright also talked extensively about Make Magazine and the Bring it Back challenge which is the basis for our experimental work this week.
Our meeting room
