Shuttle woes
Well, I’m back in Brisbane! Sure, I’m going to be leaving again for Japan in a couple of weeks, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!
Big thing in the news (at least science news!) at the moment is the upcoming shuttle launch in the U.S. Scheduled for Wednesday (i.e., yesterday) it was postponed until Monday after one of the fuel sensors (that measures how much fuel is in the tank) malfunctioned. The astronauts were actually strapped in a ready to go, about two and a hfalf hours before the scheduled launch - can you imagine how that must have felt?! Being all psyched up to go into space, and then having it cancelled on you at the last moment.
Still, with something as complicated as this, it’s far better to be safe than sorry. Scarily, on Tuesday a window cover fell off the shuttle and damaged one of the heat resistant tiles. As far as I can find out, no-one was working on it - it just decided to drop off. Everything has been fixed, but it’s still a little nerve wracking…
Hopefully, though, by Monday everything will be sorted out. The shuttle is to rendezvous with the International Space Station, in orbit around Earth, but due to the position of the launch site and space station they only have until the end of the month to launch, or they’ll have to wait until September before the two line up correctly again. That means I imagine there’s a bit of pressure to get everything working right before July 31!
We’ll see what happens on Monday!
Hey Joel,
I was in your “Lightning Strikes… in a film canister” session this afternoon. I was one of the girls from the St Rita’s group and on behalf of all of us who attended from our school, I’d like to extend a thank you to you and the assistant student you had working with you (I think his name was Jonathan). Sorry if that’s incorrect spelling. As you could probably tell, we all had a great time this afternoon so thank you so much for your time.
Hi Tonile! Yep, I remember you
Glad you enjoyed yourself this afternoon, and I’ll look forward to seeing you around Uni again sometime soon, I’m sure!
I’ll pass that on to Jonathan, too - it’s great to have some feedback.
Cheers,
Joel