A very interesting Live Chat last night! 62 participants were able to chat with student researchers at Mars! Well, the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, that is! I received an email earlier this year from Christine Redmond, an INSPIRE alumnus who is a freshman at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. She wrote that she was part of a GT crew (Crew 101) going to spend two weeks at the MDRS, and wondered if she could involve the INSPIRE OLC in their mission. We came up with the plan to have a competition to suggest activities and experiments the crew could do at the Station, and host a Live Chat with the crew. From 26 proposals from the OLC, the crew selected 4. Last night, our Live Chat connected the Mars team to the OLC.
Those who attended almost immediately noticed a communication difficulty. Here is some back story to help explain what happened. Protocol for the crew on station is to maintain the same communication delay they would experience if on Mars: about 20 minutes. This would be impossible for our chat, so special permission was given to connect live. Because of the remoteness of the Station, all communication is done through microwave relay (this is line of sight from tower to tower), which produced about a 3 second delay for our audio. If you listen to the archived recording, you can hear my voice echo back over their speakers about 3 seconds after I finish. This is actually the length of the delay to our astronauts walking on the Moon, so there is an air of authenticity to the delay, however long.
Christine wrote to me afterward to also explain that, after four days cooped up in the habitat, they were succumbing to a little "cabin fever". Their team was very excited about the chat and connecting to the outside world, and they got tickled with themselves at the start of the presentation, which you can hear on the archive. Although Christine apologized for it later, it helps to underscore the need and the way to relieve stress. Team dynamics is very important in missions, and long term missions especially, and I'd much rather hear laughing fro a team than sniping at each other or even stony silence!
A special part of the chat was hearing from the four OLC student teams whose proposals were chosen by the 101 Crew. Very interesting ideas, which illustrates the incredible talent we have on the OLC. The Crew was impressed with all the submissions, and would like to do this again. Our thanks to those students, and the 101 Crew from Ga Tech who gave us a great chat!
Next week, we will talk about NASA's environmental activities with 'NASA Going Green' featuring Steve Zornetzer from the Ames Research Center in California. Be there next Thursday, March 24, at 8:00pm CDT! Sign up now on the Discussion Board.
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