Jane Houston Jones » NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

NASA Social at Dryden Flight Research Center, May 4, 2012

jane — Tue, 08 May 2012 21:53:06 +0000

This way to the first @DrydenSocial

New NASA Social lanyard, badge and patch, old tweetup pins

Here I am inside the Astronaut CTV (Crew Transport Vehicle) I would have laid down on the bed I'm sitting on, but I was too excited!

Here are the fabulous handouts and books for the attendees

My other car is not an F-18 Hornet

I was one of the lucky attendees at the first NASA Social at Dryden Flight Research Center last Friday, May 4, 2012. Here’s my first blog about the event — a play-by-play rundown of the speakers and tours on the agenda. NASA selects attendees who use social media, so naturally we’re encouraged to share the experience. Who wouldn’t want to do that, anyway? Here’s my social self for you to follow if you’d like: @jhjones on Twitter and JaneHoustonJones on Facebook. My NASA video podcast, What’s Up, with RSS feed and iTunes link is here, on YouTube here, and expanded with educational activites, starcharts and web links here.

But, first of all, I’d like to offer my sincere thanks to the Dryden Office of Strategic Communications team for a flawless and exhilarating experience! Thank you Kevin, Lisa, Terry, Beth, Leslie, and the many others who put this event together. Thanks to the speakers, the pilots, and the many interpreters, managers, AV team, oh, gosh thanks everyone at the Dryden Flight Research Center for allowing 50 Aeronautical geeks/social media savants into your world for a day. We really appreciated it!

In looking over the agenda, I noticed a url below every single speaker’s name and most of the aircraft and other venues we visited. What a brilliant addition to the program!

Introductions
Kevin Rohrer, Chief of the Office of Strategic Communications Kevin’s Bio
Stuff I learned: Kevin makes his own beer, and drinks it too!

Welcome
David McBride, Center Director David’s bio
Stuff I learned: Dryden has the most manned launches of ANY @NASA center! And David watches my What’s Up podcast via itunes on his iPad.

History of Dryden Flight Research Center
Christian Gelzer, Chief Historian About Dryden Stuff I learned: Dryden started in 1946 to test the X-1 and find out if supersonic flight was possible (and survivable).

Sonic Booms
Ed Haering, NASA Aerospace Engineer
Sonic Booms
Dryden sonic boom research Stuff I learned: “The boom you heard today started in 1947. You look out on the lake bed and realize how blessed you are to be doing this.”

Historical aircraft tour
Pete Merlin, Dryden Historian
X-1E
LLRV-Lunar Landing Research Vehicle Stuff I learned: The LLRV was used to study and analyze piloting techniques needed to fly and land the Apollo Lunar Module in the moon’s airless environment
M2-F1 lifting body I learned: M=Manned, F= Flight. The wingless, lifting body aircraft design was initially conceived as a means of landing an aircraft horizontally after atmospheric reentry.

Global Hawk (unmanned)
Phil Hill, NOAA Pilot
Global Hawk Learned: is an unmanned aircraft for high-altitude, long-duration Earth science missions. 111,000 nautical mile range, 30-hour endurance.

Ikhana (Predator B unmanned)
Hernan Posada, Mark Pestana
Ikhana – unmanned science demonstration aircraft. I learned Mark Pestana’s daughter is an intern at JPL, in fact, ~~I’m meeting her tomorrow~~ I met her two days ago and took her on a tour of JPL’s Space Flight Operations Facility “Darkroom”. And I learned Ikhana is a Choctaw Native American word for “intelligent, conscious, or aware, and this drone is used to conduct long-duration Earth observations. One more thing I learned: Mark Designs NASA Mission Patches in his spare time!

Gulfstream- III
Ethan Baumann and Natalie Spivey, NASA Engineers
Gulfstream-III Learned – it’s a multi-role cooperative research platform testbed for a variety of flight research experiments.

Dryden Pilots
Nils Larson, Acting Chief pilot Nils’ bio
Stuff I heard: Great quotes on working at Dryden: “”You look out at the lakebed and you think ‘It’s so cool’…It’s like being paid to eat ice cream.” “U-2 most difficult plane to fly, F/A-18 most fun, F-15 is the Cadillac” Why did you choose @nasaDryden? “Dryden is Mecca for test pilots” “flew between 90 & 100 different planes, blimps, etc. U2 is fun to fly because it can have bad day!”

Link to all Dryden Pilots (warning, includes many astronauts who worked here at Dryden.)

Lunch Break in the Dryden cafe – I had chicken salad with pilots in flight suits! @Camilla_SDO seated (perched) at the next table, gave me the stink-eye >.<

Automatic Collision Avoidance Technology
Mark Skoog, Project Manager
Automatic Collision Avoidance Technology Link to awesome avoidance vids posted soon. I learned to follow the lunch break with collision avoidance videos. Wow!

Flight Opportunities Program
John Kelly, NASA Program Manager
3 min Flight Opportunities vid Stuff I learned: Flight Opportunities system has tested orbital emergency surgery techniques and fire extinguishers prior to use on ISS, helping private companies test in more space-like environs, gets suborbital flights for payloads needing to fly in 0g, stuff like that.

Experimental Fabrication Lab
Ed Swan, Structural Fabrication Branch Chief
Experimental Fabrication Labs What I learned: Best quips of the day. “No aircraft flies here without something pointy sticking out of it.” and “What was your most interesting job?” / “Cutting a four-engine airplane in half.” “@NASADryden understands that parts need to be perfect, they give us our time. Parts can be worth millions in data. Best Quote: “You have a whole project waiting on the part, you don’t have time to tweet”. Here’s another Fabrication Lab feature.

Life Support
Phillip Wellner, Aircrew Life Support Technician
Dryden Aircrew Life Support Systems Stuff I learned: If a pilot flew above the Armstrong limit using only an oxygen mask and no pressure suit, the water wetting his lungs would boil as would the saliva in his mouth. Blood would boil too.
Stuff I watched: Phillip inflated a SR-71 flight suit with a shop vac, High-altitude flight suit fashion show, Helmet foo. Stuff I ate: high altitude Chicken a la king, Sloppy Joes, applesauce in a silvery toothpaste-ish tube.

Flight Load Labs
Larry Hudson, Chief Test Supervisor
Flight Loads Lab What I learned: Watched a plane flap its wings during flight load testing in fast motion. Large quartz lamps apply radiant energy to test airframes to simulate heat in flight. Flight Loads Lab tests not only structural loads, but heat and environmental loads, too!

Photography
Jim Ross, Multimedia Supervisor
Jim Ross link. Stuff I learned: Astronaut Gordon Fullerton, retired, former Chief Pilot at Dryden is mentioned in nearly every presentation. He referred to Jim Ross (and other video/photog staff) as “self loading baggage” with a wink, I bet. (I tweeted that!) Bonus: We all got autographed shuttle/747 picture by Jim (#NASA904 and #OV103).

Videography
Lori Losey, Senior Video Producer/Director
Here’s the video we saw. Lori Losey award writeup. What I learned: Awesome presentation, more great quotes from Lori: I have the best seat in the house. “You can Puke in a bag at 3G’s. You tie it off, put it in your suit, and keep filming.” “Compressed my spine, dislocated my shoulder, bruises from harnesses.”

Hangar 4802 (Aircraft tour and F-18 cockpit photos)
F-18 Hornet aircraft It was an FA-18 flyover test with a sonic boom for the @DrydenSocial!
Crew Transportation Vehicle Learned: Seven seats (and a few beds) for seven Shuttle astronauts in the Crew Transport Vehicle.
YO-3 Only 11 YO-3′s built in the Vietnam era and this is the only remaining functional one. Used for baseline sound tests (it’s very quiet) YO-3A propeller: 78 layers of birch.
T-34 At Dryden, the T-34C is primarily used for chasing remotely piloted unmanned air vehicles which fly slower than NASA’s F-18′s mission support aircraft can fly. It is also used for required pilot proficiency flying.
T-48 This is the 1st time the public has been allowed to see the X-48C Hybrid Wing Body.
Gulfstream II NASA 944, one of four Gulfstream II Shuttle Training Aircraft, arrived at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center from the Johnson Space Center in Houston Aug. 19 in preparation for its retirement and eventual static display.
Beechcraft Kingair One of Dryden’s King Air aircraft, NASA 801, (N801NA) serves as a testbed for various research projects, and is also flown for a range of mission support activities.

Media and blog links

May 1, 2012 feature Behind the Scenes @NASADryden

May 7, 2012 feature NASA Social: Behind the Scenes at Dryden

See what the #DrydenSocial attendees tweeted here!

Flying through the Leonid Storm of 2002, aboard NASA Dryden’s DC-8 Airborne Research Laboratory with Astronaut Gordon Fullerton as our pilot. Lots of interior DC-8 photos of our scientific equipment, too.

Counting meteors from Amboy Crater – Lyrids 2012

jane — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:33:50 +0000

Amboy Crater at dawn

2012 Lyrid Meteor Shower Meteor Profile showing peak near 04h-06h UTC

My visual meteor observing report with 30 minute (or less) intervals, and magnitude distribution

Saturday night, April 21, Mojo and I headed to our new favorite dark sky spot, Amboy Crater, one of the darkest observing locations in the US. This spot has great horizons and its remoteness keeps all but the serious observers away, though we’ve met delightful observing buddies at this spot. Our one way drive from Monrovia, CA is 170 miles, fyi.

After a night of observing, you can’t beat the morning hike to Amboy Crater, a 6,000 year old volcanic cinder cone, either. Even in the summer it’s cool at dawn. Look carefully at the oxidized lava beds as you follow the hiking trail to the crater and you might find some Chuckwalla lizards! Chuckwallas can reach 16 inches in length, weigh up to 2 pounds and are specially adapted for desert living. Chuckwallas are my very favorite herps, well, next to the desert tortoise, that is.

The peak of the Lyrids occured at 1:30 a.m. Eastern (10:30 Pacific). The constellation Lyra was barely above my horizon at that hour. This meant the highest rates were probably recorded several time zones east of my California location. I set up my observing area, shut my eyes until about 11:00 p.m., and then I managed to observe straight through the night — from 11:40 p.m. until just before dawn at 5:16 (6:40h – 12:16h UT).

Here are a few tips I use to prepare myself for a night of meteor counting. First, I read Bob Lunsford’s weekly meteor shower recap on the Yahoo meteorobs group email list which discusses amateur meteor astronomy. It’s a good place to “lurk” and learn.

Bob wrote “The Lyrid (LYR) shower is expected to reach maximum activity on the night of April 21/22 with rates up to 15 shower members per hour. The radiant is located at 18:08 (272) +33. This area of the sky is actually located in extreme eastern Hercules, eight degrees southwest of the brilliant blue-white star Vega (Alpha Lyrae). The radiant is best placed just before the break of dawn when the radiant lies highest in the sky. While Lyrid meteors can be seen in both hemispheres, the north is favored as the radiant lies much higher in the sky. Rates will fall rapidly after maximum and little activity will be seen the remainder of the week. At 48km/sec. the Lyrids would produce meteors of medium-swift velocity. It should be noted that the Lyrids can occasionally produce bright meteors of fireball class magnitude.”

Next I familiarized myself with the spring sky and printed out some all-sky charts, marking the radiant between Lyra’s bright star Vega, and the Keystone section of Hercules. I then decided where to look — 50-70 degrees above the horizon, 20-40 degrees away from the radiant. I selected the area around the bright star Arcturus in the constellation Bootes. When counting meteors you don’t want to look directly at the radiant as the meteors will look like short streaks, or points of light.

For this shower the rates were not expected to be too high, so I decided to record (for my first time) the magnitude of each meteor. I made a note of the magnitude of Saturn, Mars and Venus and re-familiarized myself with the magnitudes of many bright stars nearby during my prep time. Then, I selected two small constellations (Corona Borealis, and the head of Draco) which contain magnitude 2-5 stars and memorized their magnitude.

Armed with all these stellar magnitudes, I settled down and waited for it to get dark. Once it did, I began the first important observation — estimating the limiting magnitude. The limiting magnitude is the magnitude of the faintest star near the zenith that the observer can detect using the slightly averted naked eye. It defines both the condition of the sky’s clarity and the quality of the observer’s eyes. I keep a set of these charts on a clipboard and take them with me on all observing trips, even if I am not observing meteors. Every 30-45 minutes, between my half-hour counting sessions, I re-counted the stars in the selected areas, to note any changes in the sky clarity or the condition of my own eyes.

In a nutshell my skies were Magnitude 6.5, which is very dark. Weather conditions: clear, 98 degrees at sunset, 62 degrees at dawn. It was a shirtsleeve weather night almost all night long, tho’ I put on a fleece jacket at about 4 a.m.

Between 11:40 p.m.and 5:16 a.m. (06:40h – 12:16h UT) I counted 36 Lyrids, 6 Sporadics and 2 Anthelion meteors. A quarter of the Lyrids I saw were very bright -1 or brighter meteors. I took short breaks between counting sessions to re-estimate the limiting magnitude, have a snack, check on what Mojo was imaging through his telescope, stargaze through my own scope, etc.

06:40h-07:10h UT – 7 Lyrids
07:30h-08:00h UT – 3 Lyrids
08:15h-08:45h UT – 5 Lyrids, 1 sporadic
08:50h-09:20h UT – 5 Lyrids, 1 sporadic
09:30h-10:00h UT – 6 Lyrids, 2 sporadics
10:05h-10:25h UT – 1 Lyrids, 1 sporadics, 1 Anthelion
Break to look at Saturn, have a snack, scan Milky Way
10:59h-11:29h UT – 2 Lyrids, 1 Anthelion
11:30h-12:00h UT – 7 Lyrids (2 fireballs!)
12:01h-12:16h UT – 1 sporadic

You can see that I saw the most meteors just as I was getting started (which was near the peak) and again near dawn (when Lyra was at its highest in the sky). Just before 5 a.m. 12h UT both Mojo and I saw a very bright bollide, greenish in color in the western sky. I estimated its magnitude at -5, brighter than Venus. It probably was much brighter. Coincidentally, 3 hours later an even more impressive bollide streaked across the California Sierra foothills, and broke up in the atmosphere, sprinkling meteorites over a wide populated area. Both of these bollides were Lyrid fireballs!

My other Meteor blogs and adventures

Flying through the Leonid Storm of 1999 – aboard USAF’s ARIA from Edwards AFB

Leonids 2002 – aboard NASA’s DC-8 from Dryden Flight Research Center

Observing meteors from the city – yes you can!

My meteor observing gear

January Quadrantids and a demoted constellation

August Perseids and meteor recording tips

Lyrid 4/22/12 fireball movie with radiant map

Mojo’s astrophotography from Lyrid shower night

Shuttle Discovery lands at Edwards AFB 9/11/09

jane — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:53:18 +0000

Look for the shuttle to the right of the contrail in my photo (click on the image for full res version)

Shuttle and ground in one image. This photo and the rest of these photos courtesy of Gary Spiers

Space shuttle Discovery

Touchdown - twin dustplumes from gear touching down

Parachute deploys

NASADryden tweeted at 9:58 a.m. “We’ve been called up to support a potential shuttle landing today, see web for details http://www.nasa.gov/centers”

1:35 p.m. “Shuttle will land at Edwards today, deorbit burn scheduled for 4:47 PDT, landing at 5:53 PDT”

With landing scheduled at 5:53 p.m. PDT September 11, 2009 fellow astronomer Gary Spiers and I sped from Pasadena to Edwards Air Force Base to see one of if not possibly the last California landing of a space shuttle. We left Pasadena at 3:15 p.m. for the 2 plus hour drive.

Navigator Gary scoped out the viewing choices while I drove. We passed Palmdale and headed for Rogers Dry Lake. Soon we saw groups of cars off California State Highway 58, and we headed further down the highway for a higher vantage point at the Northeast side of the lake bed. We turned off at the historic 20 Mule Team Road.

I was receiving the Twitter updates from NASA Dryden on my cell phone. We arrived about a half hour before touchdown and setup camera gear in the 102 degree late-afternoon heat.

We picked a perfect viewing spot. The shuttle would pass directly overhead on its loop from the West to runway 22 at Edwards Air Force Base. You can see the ground track, including the close range track of orbit 219 here.

Here are the exciting tweets from NASADryden, which I passed along to the folks nearby:

“15 minutes until touchdown, less than 1,000 miles away 5:38 PM Sep 11th

Discovery is less than 700 miles away

Right on ground track, 11 minutes until touchdown. Everything looking good

Less than 277 to go, traveling at 7 times the speed of sound

Approaching the CA coastline

7.5 minutes till touchdown

Discovery is 78 miles from Edwards

Just heard the sonic boom here at Dryden! Discovery will be here soon!

3 minutes till touchdown

All eyes at Dryden are on the runway!

Shuttle Discovery has landed at Edwards AFB, welcome back!

Wheels stopped on Discovery with the National Anthem playing in the background. I love this country and NASA! ”

Gary and I were snapping photos and recording video as honking, applause, whistles and cheers erupted from people inside, and alongside over 125 cars parked on the overpass, offramp shoulder, on and off 20 Mule Team Road.

Soon the big rig drivers and other space enthusiasts were pulling off the shoulder and driving back to their daily life. Next to us Brad and Judy from Visalia lamented the dead battery in their camera as they planned to drive three hours back home. We exchanged email addresses and I’ll be sending them this report, photos and video of our first, and maybe last real-time up-close view of a shuttle landing.

These photos courtesy of Gary Spiers whose images were shot using a Nikon D90 body with a Nikon 300mm F2.8 lens. My video and a few pre-landing snapshots were shot using a Pentax Optio M60 compact camera. Taken from 20 Mule Train Road on the Northeast side of the Rogers Dry Lake at the intersection of California Highway 58 and 20 Mule Team Road on September 11, 2009. We were over 5 miles away from the landing strip, but you can just barely see the dustplumes and parachute deployment at 1 min 42 seconds into my video.

My video of Discovery Landing