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Primary Principal Investigators Team at NASA Ames, California. |
This has been an exciting two weeks. I have been participating in a TIM or Technical Interchange Meeting. Four days of face-to-face meetings with all critical partners associated with our mission in February. Key personnel from NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Johnson Space Center, NASA Kennedy Space Center, CASIS, DOD, US Army, and IU were all participating. While it is expensive and difficult to get everyone in one location, these four days have provided an opportunity to have some very important and critical meetings. I have learned about so many details, such as required forms and trainings that need to be completed for our studies on the Space Station. These are large meetings with key stakeholders in all areas. We have scientists (our team as well as NASA experts) to provide advice based on unique spaceflight environment and constraints, engineers to ensure hardware will suit our needs, crew trainers to train astronauts to perform our studies, shipping experts to transport supplies and spaceflight hardware to and from Kennedy Space Center for launch, operations experts to plan the astronaut’s time down to the minute, logistics and payload experts and so much more. In addition to learning about all of the detailed specifics for the spaceflight, we were fortunate to see and tryout the spaceflight hardware used for training the astronauts (look for future blogs with more details). We also went to the Ames control center where we were able to watch live video of the astronauts and past video of mice in spaceflight. Seeing all of this in person and asking questions allows us to better design our experiment and appreciate the limitations as well as the opportunities. The entire team assisting us has been incredible. They are smart, hard-working and friendly individuals which made long four-day meetings very informative and enjoyable. |
Written by Melissa
