Since I last wrote, the crew of STS-124 successfully completed their mission and returned to earth. Translation: we’re up next! The team here at Goddard couldn’t be more excited—two weeks ago, we shipped 3 of our 4 carriers (those are the large building blocks that make up the payload for STS-125) to Kennedy Space Center and have begun the process of integrating our hardware to the shuttle’s payload bay.
It’s really hard to believe how much time, effort, and energy goes into preparing for a launch. There are so many people that need to work together in order to make things “go”; from the folks who design the parts to those who run the final checkouts, everyone’s role is important to the success of the mission and program in general. I was thinking about this the other day—in my day-to-day life here at Goddard, I interact with upwards of 20-30 people beyond a casual “hello” in the hallway….and that’s just the folks working on one sub-system! When you propagate that number over a vehicle the size of the space shuttle that contains thousands of subsystems, you really get an appreciation for just how big this all really is.
As the launch gets closer, this team has really come together to meet all of our goals. I won’t lie—the hours and days are getting long for all of us right now; but we’re coming down the home stretch. Systems are coming together, final rounds of testing are being completed, and piece by piece, our hardware is coming to the end of its preparatory journey. Over the last two and a half years working here at Goddard, I’ve gotten to see several of these designs go from initial concepts on a meeting room whiteboard to a physical systems that I’ve gotten to help build and test. To see everything come full circle like this has been absolutely incredible.
Lately, my part of the “circle” has been to support the last of our testing efforts….a process we affectionately refer to as “shake and bake”. Space is a pretty unforgiving place – the launch/landing loads and temperatures experienced once on orbit are far greater than those you’d see in your day-to-day life here on Earth. Because of this, we need to perform a variety of tests in order to qualify the hardware for flight. We develop plans—similar to a lab report you’d write at school—outlining the test we’d like to perform, why we’d like to perform it, and what we expect to happen. From there, we shake, pull, push, heat, and cool the system until we’re certain that it will behave the way that we expect it to. This often results in getting to perform some pretty neat, hands-on activities in order to get the measurements that we need. For me, this is probably one of the most exciting parts of my job.
So what’s up next? After I finish my work here in
Until next time (from Florida!).
Dream BIG!
Meg
Welcome aboard, Megan.
I used to build and commission combustion turbine power plants for Westinghouse, and some of what you’ve described brought back fond memories.
Watching as the warehouse floor became visible, and more and more components found their way into the turbine/generator enclosure was satisfying, but nowhere near as satisfying as the steps leading up to “base load”, or full power into the grid.
There was a step I called “Run it, break it, find it, fix it. Repeat as necessary”. This referred to the first, sometimes furtive steps along the path. I found that with careful attention to detail, the above sometimes became unnecessary.
The “teams” were always different…four or five field engineers of various disciplines (mine was instrumentation and controls) literally thrown together with 45 days to “first fire”.
First fire meant that we were that much closer to going home.
Treasure these days, for they will not come again. When you see the photos HST begins sending down, feel pride in your, and your team’s, accomplishment.
Go STS-125!