April 12, 1994 MET 03:02:00:00

Student Report : Day Two

As of today, the mission is continuing smoothly. We've gotten some incredible footage, both radar and video, beamed down to us from Endeavor. We found out that our first report actually made it to the site that it was intended for on the Net, and we got an incredible tour of Mission Control. One thing that I thought deserved passing along -- in the control room, there is one plaque on the wall for each shuttle mission that has gone up. After each mission is over, the member of the flight team who made the most important mission-critical decision gets the honor of placing the plaque on the wall. During one mission, for example, a snap judgment call on the part of the booster specialist prevented the mission from having to abort from the air, an extremely hazardous operation. Instead, they got the shuttle into orbit, corrected the problem, and the mission was a success. Guess who put up that plaque?

Tonight, Alicyn is going to experience the highlight of the mission, at least for the students -- starting tonight with her, continuing two nights from now with Jon, and two days after that with Aaron, we are all going to get a chance to actually talk on the ground-air loop with the astronauts.

Speaking of the loops, let me describe a little about the communication system that they use here at JSC during the mission. We're working in a room called the EOL, or Earth Observations Lab, and over in one of the corners there is a touch-screen monitor and a headset. On the monitor are about 18 different little "buttons," and each of them represents a communications "loop". At any time, we can monitor as many loops as we like, listening for anyone trying to call us or just trying to get the most up to date reports on each section's work. If we hear, for example, "Earth Obs, this is POCC COMM on Data PC." we know that POCC COMM (The Payload Communications officer, one of only two positions allowed to speak with the astronauts) wants to talk with us. So we push the Data PC loop button once, and change it from "monitor" to "talk." Then we can talk into the headset and communicate with POCC COMM, or MAPS Science, or any of the other stations. Some of our loops are monitor-only; AG1, the Air- Ground loop to the astronauts, for example, is for POCC COMM and CAPCOM alone. (CAPCOM is the other position that can talk to the crew.) Because of the loops, a huge room like Mission Control is almost so quiet that you can hear a pin drop -- if you need to talk, you talk to that one person across the headset instead of shouting across the room. There are no ringing phones, and we can pay attention to several different things at the same time, as well as catching the transmissions between the astronauts and Mission Control.

So Alicyn will be the first of the students to talk to the astronauts, and one of the very few people in the world to be so privileged during a mission. We have already been extensively briefed for this -- mission control is VERY serious about what gets said over that voice loop. Before she talks tonight, Alicyn will go through another briefing, and has to submit what she's going to say at least two hours in advance of the actual talk. It's a little extreme, yes, but the astronauts spend pretty much every waking minute working on getting all the data they possibly can, so taking even five minutes out is a significant demand. I don't know about you, but we don't think that this is terribly onerous; they're giving us an incredible chance, and I think that any of us would gladly agree to all of this and much more to get a chance to get on- line with the Shuttle.

So, tomorrow Alicyn will give you the report from after her talk with the Endeavor, and we'll once again report on what's going on here at JSC. Same Net- time, same Net-channel ...