Let the Games Begin!

OPENING CEREMONIES: You'd have to be entirely unplugged not to know today marks the start of the Summer Olympic Games in London. 


In order to get ready for the Games, we watched a video about the history of the Olympics on BrainPOP. 


Afterward, the kids took the quiz about the video and they did pretty well. Then we talked about a couple of the reasons the Olympics are so darn special. CJ named one reason. He noted that since they only happen once every four years, that's a long time between opportunities to go for the gold. The reason Annabelle gave as the reason they're so special is because you're competing for your country, not just yourself. 


After that, we hopped over to the kitchen island, where I had six (store bought) flag cookies waiting to be colored. Rick was here at that point, so they each had two to color. I asked them to do one traditional one, and then their second flag could be the colors of their choosing. CJ's flags are the first column, Bee's are the second and Rick's are the third.

While they 'worked' they snacked on some Official 2012 Team USA cereal from Kellogg's. 

The back of the box featured trading card sized profiles of some Team USA athletes. One that jumped off the box at me was table tennis player Michael Landers. He looked so young, I was intrigued. So after they finished the flags, we hopped back over to the computers and I Googled him and lo and behold, we found a profile about him on a special Olympics Web site by Kellogg's. Turns out Landers is the youngest ever U.S. men's table tennis champion. There's a really nice (and short) video profile of him here: http://www.kelloggs.com/teamusa/#/teamusa/athletes/michael-landers.html. I'd encourage you to watch it. 


The site has other athletes' bios, too. We'll probably check those out in the days to come. 

GRAPPLED: On July 20, we watched a rocket launch from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. On board was an unmanned cargo module headed for the ISS. This morning, at 5:23 a.m. Pacific time, astronauts on the ISS confirmed that the Japanese Kounotori 3 cargo freighter had been captured by Expedition 32 Flight Engineer Joe Acaba using Canadaarm2. It was snared at an altitude of 253 miles above Earth, over the southern Indian Ocean. 

It's worth noting these operations don't always go off without a hitch. In fact, just a few days ago, an unmanned Russian cargo freighter Progress 47resupply spacecraft failed to dock with the ISS due to an apparent failure in its new Kurs-NA rendezvous system.

NASA Television will broadcast the attempted redocking of the unpiloted Russian cargo spacecraft to the space station for engineering data collection beginning at 5 p.m. EDT Saturday, July 28. 


According to a NASA press release today, "The ISS Progress 47 resupply ship arrived at the station in April and undocked from the Pirs docking compartment July 22. It made its first attempt to re-dock the following day. A technical problem prevented the spacecraft from reaching the space station, and its computers placed it a safe distance from the orbiting laboratory. Russian engineers are testing a new automated rendezvous system, called Kurs-NA, for possible use on future Russian spacecraft arriving at the station."