Flight Week: Day 1

After a long night the team made it to JSC Ellington Field by 7:30am. We were greeted by the Texas A&M team and soon met the other teams from  Buffalo SUNY and Northern Florida. After a Welcome and Safety Briefing the team had a successful Pre-Test Readiness Review.

 NASA Engineers asked the team really great questions about the safety of our apparatus.

The boys and our NASA mentor Dr. Leimkuhler

  The team made a quick stop at Home Depot to pick up a few last minute items before we went back to the hotel. Jill and Dr. Barney Smith took a short power nap before dinner while the team worked on the apparatus. Then the boys took a nap on the ride to dinner.
The BSU team met the other teams and the RGO staff at Red River BBQ for a group dinner. Yummy Texas BBQ!

After dinner the team worked hard and long to get the apparatus ready for flight.

Read More

Arriving in Houston, Texas

On June 8, 2014 after 5 hours and 5 minutes of plane napping, the Boise State University Microgravity Research Team arrived in Houston.

 The two flights were smooth, and all but our two mounting rails arrived with us.

However, nothing is stopping us from assembling our apparatus in the Homewood Suites conference room. Once we arrived at the beautiful Homewood Suits by Hilton Hotel, we began reassembling the apparatus. We began at 2:00 pm and worked on it for more than 12 hours! 

Family Dinner

The Homewood Suites staff went above and beyond to deliver us outstanding service. Thank you Homewood Suits staff!!

Carl

Janos

Scott

Roxanne

Libby

See you tomorrow at NASA's Ellington Field!

Read More

Getting Ready for Houston

During the weeks leading up to traveling to NASA's Johnson Space Center the team preformed several different tasks:

 

Making a "Mock Brian" out of Ballistics Gel

 

 

 

 

Completing Functionality Testing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Completing Full System Testing

 

 

 

 

Read More

"Astronaut" Training Camp - Girls STEM Day Camp

On Saturday May 3^rd, 40 8-12 year old girls came to the Lookout room at the Boise State University Student Union Building for ”Astronaut “ Training Camp! They enjoyed a morning full of
science exploration and discovery.

The morning began with six activity stations that taught the girls a little about what astronauts do on Earth, to train for space and how an astronaut's body reacts to the change in gravity in their new environment.

"Vomit comet" and "Let's do the twist" station. This station taught the girls about balance and momentum, utilizing swivel chairs. 

 "Get a Grip" Station. At this station girls learned about the importance of jointed space gloves.

"Remaining Neutral" Station. At this station the girls learned how astronauts train in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab and the importance of a properly weighted suit.

"O2-How Much?" Station. The girls learned the importance of healthy hearts and lungs and got to measure their lung capacity!

"Heart and Lungs" Station. The girls got to touch, feel, and hold pig hearts and lungs.

 "Bending Under the Pressure" Station. The girls considered the importance of a pressurized spacesuit with the demonstration of the vacuum chamber.

These activities were followed by "Toys in Space" stations to explore how different objects act in microgravity. Then the girls where given a challenge to design Astronaut Space Suits out of white trash bags and duct tape! The camp was concluded by their girls showing off their Space Suit designs in a fashion show for their parents. 





Thank you to all the girls for coming to our awesome STEM event!

Read More

The Last day at Mountain View Elementary School

April 25^th,  2014

Thank you Ms. Jarvis for having the BSU Microgravity Team! We have had a blast teaching science, engineering, technology, and math to your 5th grade students over the past month.

On Friday April 25^th we finished the egg drop engineering challenge. The students worked in teams to redesign their "rovers" with a few new parameters. This week four team's "rovers" successfully protected their eggs. Now it’s up to the BSU team to pick two lucky winners. We are looking for designs that meet all specified requirements and teams with science journals filled with detailed notes and diagrams of the engineering process.

 

 

   

 

   
Winners to be announced shortly!

Read More

Marian Pritchett

On April 22^nd, 2014, the BSU Microgravity Team had the opportunity to go to Marian Pritchett high school and work with pregnant teens and teen moms. 

We taught these young women about Newton’s Laws of Motion using NASA Toys in Space Curriculum. The girls create their own experiments to explore these laws further and hypothesized how the various toys would perform within a microgravity environment. 

We ended our outreach with these young mothers, by inviting their toddler children in and doing a "mommy and me" science session. During this session we exposed these young women to ways that they can expose their children to science early though play, by tapping into their toddler's natural curiosity and probing their children's thinking through questioning. The team helped these young moms learn how to provide the earliest building blocks of scientific literacy and discovery in their toddler children.

Read More