Mission Day 7

July 29, 2026

Good Morning.  The temperature today was slightly cooler and overcast.

After breakfast, we toured Rocket Park with our trainer, Allie.  She does a great job of telling us the little things that the signs don’t say.

A lecture by the SLS Communications Manager was excellent!   His presentation was extremely informative and he knew so much about the Artemis program.  He has been with the program since the SLS design was on paper.  

We have been provided with all of the presentations, experiments, and any other activity we did this week and I can’t wait to use some of his information in the future.

Team Photo time was next, so we all got in our flight suits and took the official Team Acaba photo.

Next was the heat shield experiment.  We were given different materials and had to create something that would be a heat shield for our egg-stanaut (ours was named Eggdeavour).  We created a sandwich out of:  foil, steel wool, foil, lasagna noodle (we busted up to create pieces), and a piece of cork.  We glued it all together using 1 tablespoon of spackle.   Then it was blow torch time!   We put our shield down with the foil on the blow torch side and cork on the egg side.   The blow torch was lite and we measured the temperature of our egg every 30 seconds.  Other teams' eggs died around 80-100 seconds; ours lasted until 156 seconds!

Lunch was provided in a Lunch & Learn session – we introduced our international friends to a pulled pork or chicken sandwich with potato salad and apple turnovers – so, so good.

Our speaker was from the NASA patent office, and we learned the process for things created for the space industry were turned into commercial products we use every day.   We were given a book with all sorts of things that started in space and now we use every day.

Next, we had one of our split activities.  You could choose either a polymer class or math origami.   I chose the math (I have made slime before).   Origami is used on satellites taken to orbit.   Some of them are so big, they do not fit in the payload area of the rocket, so they have to ‘unfold’ themselves once in space.  An example is the Webb telescope; in space it is the size of a tennis court, but it had to fit in the payload bay of a rocket to be launched.  

It was finally our Mars mission time, we all put on our flight suits to look professional for our mission.  The Ouronos team headed to our space station, and the time clock started.  Ugh!   We were not prepared at all and didn’t realize everything we had to do.   I did my O2, N2, H2O, CO2 report and we started collecting data for the weather broadcast.  Click on one map, get the latitude/longitude numbers, click on another map and get the temperature, wind speed & direction, atmospheric pressure, and the particulate concentration.   Then go back to the original map and enter the information on our weather map (I now have a greater respect for Doug Heady).   Now it's time to do the broadcast – the other Environmental Specialist really wanted to do this, but he had on a bright orange shirt that wouldn’t broadcast – so Mrs. Hoggatt to the rescue!   I got on the live broadcast, and nothing worked!   So, with a shout out of my love for Dale, I grabbed the book, read the data, and signed off!   They tell me mission control was dying laughing.  (This was another thing I thought about doing as a kid, so I get to check that off my list).

Off to the Saturn 5 building for a tour with our trainer again (she has worked here four summers).   She told us so much information, it was crazy.   Lots of little tidbits and facts, not on the information boards of the exhibits.

Tomorrow is a jam-packed day with lots of different activities, then graduation and an Astronaut talk – they haven’t told us who yet, so I wonder who it will be.   My last day of Space Camp is tomorrow – I have had a blast!
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💫🚀⭐Ad Astra ⭐🚀💫