Live Chat Roundup: September 9, 2010

By Jim Gerard, INSPIRE Education Specialist, KSC, FL

Wow. I’ll rephrase that. WOW!! Last night’s chat with computer engineer Khaled Ali from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was overwhelming. As you know, we have been promoting the room limit of 100 participants as reason to log in as early as possible. Within five minutes I watched the counter reach 100: but then something amazing occurred. It continued to rise: 104, 109, 117. I was wondering if it was letting a few extras on, but the count kept rising: 189, 194, 202. We started the presentation at 8:00pm CT and students continued to join the room. At maximum I saw 308 participants. I am thrilled to get this kind of response from our community, and that you all were able to get on! In the past, we would only have a fraction of that number attend, so I we did not anticipate this. My hope is that with your patience we will settle into the best method of notifying you and ensuring the room is open to as much of the community as possible.

Our chat itself was very informative, as Dr. Ali brought us up to speed on the Mars Rovers (which actually travel quite slow at 200 meters an hour!) He condensed their six-year history to a few minutes and let us in on some of the important discoveries made during their mission. He also let us in on the stalling out of Spirit and how it is now a stationary research station, and that Opportunity is on it’s way to investigating a huge crater. After the presentation Dr. Ali answered questions from our students: we had so many we went an extra 15 minutes! Thanks to all those who offered questions, and a reminder if your question was not answered you can post it in the Live Chat thread on the Discussion Board.

Next weeks' Live Chat will be about NASA Spinoff technology with Spinoff Magazine editor Daniel Lockney from Langley Research Center, VA. Right now, we are making this a sophomore level chat, so only that grade level will be invited. If this changes, we’ll let you know here and by email.