Flighty

Expedition 58 Flight Engineer Anne McClain of NASA greets her mother, Charlotte Lamp, on Dec. 2 at the Cosmonaut Hotel in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. (Aubrey Gemignani/NASA via AP)

LOFTY AMBITION: From an article in the Seattle Times, we learned that one of the astronauts on the International Space Station right now is an Evergreen State native. Anne McClain is from Spokane.

Apparently McClain declared her intent to be an astronaut at age 3, and worked since that day to make it become a reality. (No doubt McClain's mother, Charlotte Lamp, a former math and science teacher, gave her many an encouraging word along the way.) 

McClain, 39, graduated from Gonzaga Preparatory School in 1997, and went on to West Point Military Academy. After West Point, she her work has involved, among other things, flying Army helicopters in Iraq.  

Below is a screen shot of McClain's first Tweet from space.

McClain has two master’s degrees, one in aerospace engineering and another in international relations. She's also a former member of the U.S. women’s rugby team.

I sure hope we get to meet her some day!

INSIGHT ON InSIGHT: NASA just released photos of the InSight lander on Mars - taken by another NASA craft, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Below is a composite of three images. The first is InSight's parachute, which was used during its descent and landing. The second is the lander itself, and the third is its heat shield, which protected it during descent.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

You can see larger versions of the images on this page: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA22875

In a press release, NASA explained that though the objects look teal, "That's not their actual color: Light reflected off their surfaces cause the color to be saturated." They also noted that the ground around the lander is dark, due to it being blasted by InSight's retrorockets during descent. 

FUTURE FLIGHT: An email from the European Space Agency let us know their website for kids has been revamped. We looked around a bit, and in the process learned about the ESA's module that will use three types of engines to propel NASA's Orion crew capsule in the future. The module has large fuel tanks, as well as oxygen and a heat exchange unit. 

It was recently delivered to the Space Coast in Florida via a Antonov An-124 transporter.  The photo below shows the nosecone of the transporter opened and the module in a special cargo container inside. 

• Copyright ESA–A. Conigli 

Below is ESA artis D. Ducros' rendition of what the module and Orion will look like in the not-too-distant future.

• An unmanned test flight is scheduled for 2020.

Fly By

WAY OUT: Earlier this week, the kids and I learned about an opportunity to (virtually) hop on board NASA's New Horizons space probe for a ride and shout out to Ultima Thule, a distant Kuiper Belt object. It's out past Pluto!  You just go to this webpage and enter your name and message: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Send-Greetings/

Names need to be entered by December 21, 2018.

While looking at the mission website, we were reminded that New Horizons launched over 4700 days ago. Also, we learned that there is currently an Ultima Art Campaign (contest), open to students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

At the present, no one is quite sure what Ultima looks like. In July 2017, it passed in front of a star, and a few telescopes deployed by the New Horizons team in a remote part of Argentina caught its shadow, which provided some data to help the mission team plan the flyby and understand the size, shape, orbit, and environment around Ultima Thule. Using this data, scientists think Ultima could be a long single object, or perhaps two bodies orbiting very closely together. The object is believed to be no more than 20 miles (30 kilometers) long, or, if it is a binary object(s), each component is about 9–12 miles (15–20 kilometers) in diameter.

JPL is asking for "your best space artist rendition of what you think New Horizons will encounter" at Ultima Thule. They are open to submissions in any medium, it sounds like. The deadline for entry is December 27 via this website:
https://contest.sciartexchange.org/NASA-ultima-art-campaign/entry_form/

ROUND BALL: This week, one of our projects was making a cake for Birthday Dreams, a non profit that provides birthday parties to homeless children.  The child receiving our cake asked for a basketball themed party. It was our first go at a cake of this sort, so there were a couple of new challenges, including how to texture the fondant for the basketball (we wound up using a meat tenderizing mallet), and how to make the wood grained basketball court (we mixed white and light brown fondant, then painted over it with a gold wash).

We cut the kid's name and age out of a sugar sheet, using an ESPN-like font.

(His name is partially obscured in the photo for privacy reasons.)

The Astronaut Maker

BY GEORGE: Saturday afternoon, we took advantage of our close proximity to the world-class Museum of Flight, and zipped over there for a super special presentation.

I'll have CJ go ahead and tell you a bit more about it.

On December 8th, 2018, the Museum of Flight held an event with George W. S. Abbey, best known as the former Director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, as well as a Senior Fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute. The event was in promotion of a biography of Abbey, The Astronaut Maker, written by Michael Cassutt, who himself is best known as a former writer for The Twilight Zone and Max Head. The event began at 2 P.M, and was moderated by aerospace consultant Roger Myers. Most of the demonstration consisted of Myers asking Abbey questions about his time in NASA, and involvement with historic programs (especially Apollo and the Space Shuttles). 

Toward the end of the presentation, the people on stage started taking questions from the audience. I got to ask Abbey what the most difficult or frustrating mission to work on was for him. Abbey replied that the "political missions" were by far the most frustrating for him to work on. If I recall correctly, he said that they were the most frustrating to work on because he felt like he had less control over their outcomes, and the politicians forcing the missions often lacked important knowledge about space exploration.

CJ's write up is short on details, IMHO. The ninety minute panel was absolutely fascinating. A living repository of aerospace history, Abbey pretty much talked his way from the Air Force's Dyna-Soar space program of the 1950s, through Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the space shuttle era.

The jacket of The Astronaut Maker notes Abbey had a 37 year career in aerospace, and that he was personally responsible for the selection of every astronaut class between 1978 and 1987. (During those years, he helped diversify NASA's astronauts, including recruiting and hiring numerous women and minorities.)

We learned Abbey is a local guy. He was born in Seattle. His mother worked at Boeing during World War II, when his dad was off fighting in World War II. (Abbey's dad, an immigrant, also fought in World War I, for the Canadian army.)

Abbey's recollection of details was remarkable. I felt like it was a privilege to be able to sit there in that theater and listen to him relate stories that are such an important part of spaceflight - and world - history, from the launch of Sputnik to Kennedy's assassination and how that affected the space program. 

After the presentation, we picked up the book. It should make for fascinating reading.

TREES: On our way out of The Museum of Flight, we had to stop and admire their spaced-out Christmas tree.

We also got our vintage aluminum tree up on Saturday. 

GAMERS: We've been playing a different board game pretty much every day for quite awhile. One that's pretty new to us is Nefarious The Mad Scientist Game.  A strategy game by Donald X. Vaccarino, the game involves building inventions which is a process requiring research, work, and espionage. 

We got it at Value Village a couple of weeks back. I wasn't a fan at first, but after we got the hang of it, we have declared it pretty engaging, with a nice mix of skill and luck involved, plus enough twists to keep it interesting through multiple plays.