Goodbye Florida!

Shuttle's landed after a very successful servicing mission. Our hardware's been removed and shipped back to Goddard. That means it's time to pack up and head back to Maryland :(

Florida has been amazing! beautiful weather, beach in my backyard, space shuttles, per diem, surfing and seafood have all been great. i'm really gonna miss the area and all the people i've met down here. i really hope i get the chance to come back down here for future missions.

i put together this little slide show to reminisce...enjoy and thanks for following my blog!

BYE FLORIDA

Atlas V Launch

View from VPF stairwell. atlas is just to left of white building in center

Just before I left Florida, there was another Atlas V launch. They were launching a satellite called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and another thing called LCROSS. LRO is going to orbit the moon and take pics and info to, i believe, investigate landing sites for future moon visits. LCROSS is going to smash into the surface of the moon to help research in aging craters (i think).

Atlas V on right between lightening rods. white building is the rolling support structure that protects the rocket while on the pad.

anyway, we watched the launch from a fire escape of an abandoned processing facility next to ours. it was actually where they did the launch preps for the past HST missions. the funny thing about the building, is now that its pretty much abandoned, the fire escape is always inhabited by tons of vultures. they sit on the railings all day and wait for something to get hit by a car. problem with that is the railings are grosssssss. and it smells.

Vultures hiding in the tree after we scared them away. There were like 30 of 'em in there!

but it was a nice view from up there, here's some more pics and a movie of the launch!

Cool pics of volcano explosion

here's some pictures of a volcano erupting taken by the astronauts on the ISS


I've got some nice pics of another rocket launch that i'm gonna put up soon, so check back!

More Ferry Flight Pics

I got some more pictures of Atlantis' ferry flight from California to KSC from other people and from NASA. Enjoy!









i also got to see another Atlas V launch. I'll put those pics up soon too.

Hardware Removal from Atlantis

The shuttle returned safely to Kennedy and was rolled over to the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF). Once it was there, our hardware had to be disconnected from Atlantis' power supply and all our cables had to be tied up so our stuff could get lifted out of the orbiter and back into the Can.


I had to go in on a Sunday (boo) and tie up the cables after the KSC technicians demated the connectors. I got to use all the knots I learned in my height safety class (bowline knot, hitch knot, etc.) while hanging perilously over the shuttle in a little bucket. Here's some pics:

Looking to the back of the shuttle in the payload bay. Our hardware is all the orange things in the middle. We had to wear our bunny suits when working in there. LAME

That's me in the bucket! I got to ride around in it and finish securing all the harnesses

Me working...see, i actually DO work down here

Shuttle Ferry Flight

So the mission's over and the shuttle was supposed to land on Friday in KSC. Problem is, it has been raining there all week and will probably continue into the weekend. That's OK with me because if they can't land in Kennedy, they land in California which means 12 extra days at the beach!


Friday comes and goes and they wave off landing till saturday.


Wave off saturday too.


FINALLY...after almost a week of doing NOTHING (all EVAs were finished Monday and all our equipment was off) we finally get the OK to land in California. sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

The 747 sucessfully landed in KSC and we decided to take a field trip to the landing facility to snap some pics of everything.

When we were snapping pictures, we were also getting eaten alive by dinner plate sized mosquitos. Need to remember the bug spray next time

Awesome Panoramas

Check out these awesome photos and spherical view things from our mission:


http://nasatech.net/

Deploy pics and President Speech

So now that Hubble has been deployed, we're just chilling in the control room watching our hardware cycle temperature. It was really cool today because while i was on console, President Obama got on the air to ground voice loop and said some words to the Atlantis crew. And the best part was Obama thanked the ground crew of the mission which means me, so Obama has PERSONALLY thanked me for my contribution to Hubble. Sweet!

Here are a bunch more pics of the Hubble deploy:

Bye!

SM4 Is DONE!

All EVAs are complete and HST has been deployed! It was a total success. The shuttle and crew is still up in space and we're still in Houston, but only for a couple more days.

Here's a few more shots of the last EVA day. I'll put up some of the deploy later.







WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Hubble EVAs are Complete!!!

Today we just finished our last EVA! woooooo hooooooooo!!

We just have to deploy Hubble tomorrow and then we're doooooooooooone. They took a huge team picture today in one of the main control rooms. I'm in the middle way in the back.

Pics of me on console!

Some people have been going around taking pics of everyone, here's a couple with me in them:

Our top-notch team

Me, doing something really important like saving the astronauts...most likely

There also is a documentary team running around filming everything. I'm in a couple of the clips (in the background mostly). Here's the link for what they have so far, and they'll be posting more each day.

http://hubblesite.org/servicing_mission_4/

Mission Control Center

Right now i'm on console at Johnson Space Center in Houston (as in "Houston, we have a problem"). And speaking of Apollo, I'm in the same building as the original Apollo control room! Back then, each person only had 1 monitor and they communicated between rooms using pneumatic tubes (like at the bank). Here's a picture of one console in the Apollo era control room:



Another very famous NASA quote is by Gene Kranz, Flight Director of the Apollo 13 mission was said here: "Failure is not an Option". Here's where he sat:




And here's the red phone....ooooooooh red.




Nowadays we have email, a jillion voice loops, live video feed from the shuttle and like 10 monitors to look at. here's what my station looks like
On the TVs is images of our first EVA day. All the rest are our displays and data plots. FUN!

Hi-res Hubble photos

here's some real nice photos of our grapple and berth yesterday:

Hubble Grappled!

Atlantis grabbed the hubble and now were getting ready for mate!

Hubble Again!

here's a brighter picture:

Hubble!

I can see Hubble on the shuttle video feed!

STS-125 Launch Day!

Finally, launch day for Hubble! Breda, her mom Jean and I got on our bus at 10am to head to the causeway on KSC. We set up with a great view of the shuttle and sitting among my HST coworkers.




They had a sound system set up to broadcast the official KSC commentary. They also had a countdown clock set up near our spot.





Tons of buses brought us to the causeway. Wish we coulda stayed on board with the AC blasting.

...3...2...1

Success!

And immediately after launch i had to rush home, shower and drive to the airport to catch my flight to houston:

More updates to come!