The kitchen of the Sun Pearl hotel doesn’t have an oven. Most Japanese kitchen’s don’t, in fact, but Saturday morning, Nov. 30, the borrowed kitchen was in full swing. Cody Buell, systems administrator for the Global Precipitation Measurement mission’s team in Japan, chopped mushrooms that would go into the stuffing that Courtney Buell was stirring […]
How do you launch a satellite into space? It isn’t easy. The simple answer would be to build one, place it on a rocket, and shoot it off. But building and launching satellites turns out to be exceedingly complicated things to do. They’re highly complex machines, requiring profoundly precise levels of craftsmanship, not to mention […]
The choreography rivals precision aerial acrobats. The teamwork reflects the forward line of a pro football team. This is the vanguard of NASA’s mechanical engineering corps, and to experience them at their full operational power is to gain a profound appreciation for how much more goes into spaceflight than big, booming rockets. Ages range from […]
As a Digital Mapping System (DMS) operator, I have a fairly consistent morning ritual to prepare for a day of flying over the ice. This consistency is necessary for both operational integrity and presence of mind while we are attempting to accomplish our mission. I am often apprehensive at the beginning of a daily mission […]
Steering wheel on the right side of the car, my windshield wiper slaps back and forth every time I try to signal a turn at an intersection. The controls are opposite their placement in The States, and deeply wired muscle memory is a tough thing to reprogram. I regard each and every moment at an […]
Finally! Michael Starobin and I had barely settled into the Global Precipitation Measurement mission offices at the Spacecraft Test and Assembly building at Tanegashima Space Center on Tuesday, Nov. 26, when we were grabbing cameras and bags and running out the door again. The barge carrying GPM was coming in and we had to get […]
For just a brief moment, I find myself finally able to pause and reflect on just how far we, Operation IceBridge, have come as a team and a project. It was roughly one-and-a-half years ago when we were first tasked by NASA Headquarters to bring the P-3, a four-engine turboprop aircraft, to McMurdo Station for […]
We landed in Kitakyushu, Japan, on Sunday, Nov. 24, and as soon as Global Precipitation Measurement satellite’s shipping container was loaded onto the barge that would take it to Tanegashima Island, those of us who flew on the C-5 and the unloading team that met us at the airport had to travel a different, more […]
Getting up before the sun on a November morning in Alaska may not be an honest way to represent a person’s effort. The sun doesn’t make much of an appearance at this latitude. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission team traveling to Japan takes that as a charge: we’re not planning to hang around too long, […]
Thursday, November 21 When they told us to dress in layers for the flight, they weren’t kidding. At altitude, the C-5 transporting the Global Precipitation Measurement satellite is cold. After waking up from my exhausted sleep that passed the first five hours, my feet were blocks of ice from the draft along the floor. I […]
