Collecting data and making observations

Last week the three second grade classes worked with the flight team to analyze the data from the two reduced gravity flights. Each class worked on two experiments comparing the earth data and the zero-g data. Here is a video of one of the classes.

Video from the Flight of Mrs. Donovan

These are just a couple of of clips from Feb. 6, 2007. This is the day that Mrs. Donovan flew with Ms. Nash.

The first video is the Weightless Wonder taking off.





The second video is of the plane coming in after landing.



Please note that these small videos were taken using the video feature on our Sony Still Cameras. It is easy then to upload the video using Yahoo Video. Once uploaded Yahoo provides html code to post into the blog to make watching and playing the video very easy.

Fox5 News visits Barrett--Zero G

Today a news team from Fox5 News visited Barrett to see the Flight Team present their trip to Mrs. Donovan's class, Mrs. Quinzio's class and Ms. Morales' class. Students came prepared with questions about microgravity and the reduced gravity flight. Watch the news at 5:00 tonight to see if we made it on the show!

Flight Week--Nature

What animals do you associate with Texas? Our goal was to see an armadillo, so we visited the Armand Bayou Nature Preserve near Johnson Space Center. Along the boardwalk we saw turtles sunning on rocks and logs in the pond, snakes curled up, and many paw prints. We took a trail down to the bayou and saw an egret in the distance, and several large hawks sitting on an old tree in the water. On the way back, Mrs. Golden spotted the armadillo rooting through the leaves. It moved very quickly and was hard to catch with the camera.

Flight Week - Thursday

Hi Barrett Second Grade and Mrs. Golden's Kindergarten! It was fun to see you on the screen at our teleconference. We hope you enjoyed meeting some NASA employees and hearing a little about our experiment. We can hardly wait to get back to Arlington and show you the results. Today we had a special tour at Johnson Space Center. We got to see a space vacuum where the astronauts train. It was so big, we could only see 90 feet of it and another 30 feet is underground. The door to the vacuum is 50 feet tall! We got to go in a smaller version of the vacuum where astronauts had been testing the tiles that cover the shuttle. Next we went to the Mission Control building. We sat at the controls for the Apollo missions, which is now a historical landmark. Then we got to sit in the visitors gallery and see Mission Control in action. They even had an astronaut at the controls of one of the computer terminals. We could see the astronauts working outside the shuttle and live data feed coming from space. Back at Ellington Field, we put on our flight suits for one last time to do the conference with you. Then we had to put them in the laundry and sign them back in. We said thank you to all the Flight Directors, people from the Reduced Gravity Program, and the NES representatives for giving us the opportunity to participate in the program.

Wednesday--Flight week

Flight Week—Wednesday

Today was the second flight day for our experiment. Mr. Delventhal and Ms. Frick put on their flight suits and prepared for the flight by going to the pre-flight medical briefing and getting their anti-nausea medication. Then we had a briefing with the flight director and met the pilot of the “Weightless Wonder”. I did a little brain gym to relieve stress while waiting for the flight to take off. We also had some photo ops with our mascots Space Bear and Space Monkey before loading them into their backpack for take-off on the C-9. When it came time to get on the plane, all the fliers lined up and had a little trouble staying in a straight line (just like elementary students). We got our photos taken as we boarded the plane. The playground hoop was stashed in the back of the plane and the backpack with the bears, cameras, recording sheets, stop watch, and pen went into the cargo area. As soon as we got the go ahead, we were out of our seats and setting up equipment in our area. Mr. Delventhal and I decided to change the order of the experiments so he did three in a row and I did three in a row. This meant less time wasted during a parabola to go from one side of the plane to the other. We managed to finish the experiments by parabola 30 and had some time to try out weightlessness in other ways. I tried the playground hoop and then had Space Bear try it too. Mr. Delventhal tried a front roll on the last parabola and had to sit down for the lunar and mars parabolas. Experiencing 2-g’s was almost as interesting experience as zero-g. It felt really strange to have your face and body and even ankles feel like they were dragging to the bottom of the plane. All too soon the flight was over. Would I do it again???? YES!
Back on land, we had a debriefing with the flight director. It appeared that everyone was happy with the way their experiments went and many had ideas for next year. It’s not too soon to start thinking about an experiment to do on the Reduced Gravity Jet. Then we had to take our stuff off the plane so the next group could load their experiments.

Hi Barrett!

I survived the Reduced Gravity Flight without getting sick. It was awesome! I experienced weightlessness 40 times. We look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow (Thursday) when we have the video conference with you from Ellington Field.

Andrea Donovan