Day 3 - Tuesday, April 11

We had the first round of testing our launching device on the Precision Air Bearing Floor this morning. This is a highly polished floor with very little friction that simulates how objects will move in microgravity. See the pictures below for a full description. As you will see in the video, the target is moving horizontally while the launch pad is moving backwards away from the target. Ted (who teaches middle school science at Scott Highlands Middle School in Apple valley) was able to make 5 out of 10 manual shots! Unfortunately, we weren’t able to hit the target with our launching device today. We video confrenced with the student group who designed and built the device and they told us that we needed more force to create a higher velocity, so we added another spring. After the changes we had some difficulty with the signal from the remote trigger reaching the device, so we raised the receiving antenna as well. Hopefully everything will work smoothly on Thursday!

Another highlight of the day was having the opportunity to video chat with my second and third hour classes! A huge shout out to Ms. Sorensen and the office staff for helping make that happen when I called trying to get that to work on short notice! Below you will find a few videos from today, including one of our work area in the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility that I was able to give my students a tour of during our video chat! More updates to come tomorrow!