Camp Day 1

Today we started off with a great breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausages, biscuits and gravy, fresh fruit and juice.  We received our space camp backpack and a whole bunch of other items.  We started off the morning looking at the schedule and it is going to be a busy one!  They also handed out more resources and directed us to where we could access even more.  We broke into our teams, we have 19 people on Team Zarya made of 4 guys (me and my roomates) and 15 ladies, representing United States (including Hawaii), Romania, Australia, and South Africa.  We did some group building activities like a name game and then a group tangle which took us over an hour, but you definitely got to know your teammates up close and personal!

     Next we went through Shuttle Orientation and learned all about the parts of the shuttle and all of the acronyms, flight launch schedule, and a great story about the Coke Mission (now I know why I like Pepsi).  After that it was time for lunch already and we had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, salad, fried okra (pretty good), and strawberry shortcake.

     After lunch we discussed previous shuttle missions and the purposes and importance of them and then went into the different jobs people have during a mission and signed up for positions we would be interested in for our upcoming missions.

     At this point Dr. Don Thomas joined us who was a NASA astronaut who flew on four missions to space STS-65,70,83,94.  He was a fantastic speaker and shared what it was like to be in space and had pictures he had taken and some great stories.  Was very down to earth (no pun intended) and really gave a great first hand experience of what it really is like as an astronaut.  He discussed the fact of the shuttle division of NASA closing down, but how they are looking at new avenues of space exploration specifically Mars.  We had a chance to take a team photo with him, I got to try on his space gloves and specifically asked him what his advise to students who would like to be the first person to walk on Mars would be and replied, "Hard work and don't ever give up on your dreams!"  He also gave us an autographed picture to take with us.

     Our next session was designing our mission patch.  We looked at actual past mission patches and the significant meaning of them and then we had to work in our team to design our mission patch.  Our group focused on the ideas of being educators, enlightening others with what we gain at space camp, the 4 countries represented, the 15 females and 4 males, and our team name ZARYA.

     Then we learned more about Mars and the rovers past, present, future, and the landscape features.  We did an activity where we took landforms recognizable from earth and how they were created and then looked for similar formation on Mars.  We had the opportunity to look at some of the latest photos and the formations which were amazing.  Then we were faced with the challenge of if we were assigned to build a landing device to put a rover on the moon, how would we do it safely?  Our rover was an egg, and we were given 1 piece of tissue paper