The Making of

Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) is said to house the largest populations of PhD scientists in the world.   Certainly it is home to many space based research projects.   A walk down any corridor of its many buildings is like going through an encyclopaedia of cutting edge space science.   ESA lead scientists for SOHO Bernhard Fleck had seen to it that we were given unaccompanied visitor status, an honour that some temporary workers never get.    On the other hand it was a licence to get lost.  Thanks to our NASA guardian angel, Dennis Christopher, that rarely happened.

The folks in NASA education upheld their legendary generosity by giving us enormous piles of worksheets, booklets, posters, CDs and a magic wand (it was really a pen).  Luckily they also mailed it all back to school for us.   All this despite the fact that Graham stuck his head in the end of one of their rockets.  No, I don't know why he does things like that either.

.

Emilie Drobnes shows Graham the life size mock-up of the shuttle and HST which astronauts practice  before servicing missions.  Though at the moment there is a safety ban on allowing astronauts to service HST.  NASA is designing robots to do the next service.

Mike was particularly happly when he found a telescope to tinker with - the duplicate of the HST that the astronauts practice on.   He also volunteered to do the next servicing mission.    "Forget the robots boys, I'm your man; as long as my chiropractor can come with me."

We then had a comprehensive briefing on the mechanics of the telescope from the Senior HST Engineer, British born Barry Kirkham.   We were particularly fascinated to hear how the HST can use flywheels to change its pointing direction and then lose energy from the flywheels by pulsating electromagnetic bars; transferring the energy into the Earth's magnetic field.

A new model of SOHO had been delivered to GSFC and was on show in the Experimenters' Operations Facility.   Mike was wondering if would fit in his suitcase.

One of the telescopes for the STEREO mission was under construction in a clean air facility.   After thoroughly scrubbing our shoes and walking on sticky mats, we were allowed in the first of three levels of protected environments.   To go any further we would have had to strip down and get everything short of a body wax.   We were quite happy looking through the glass.

Graham holds a newly invented mask for eclipsing the solar disk.   The device sits inside the telescope tube at the point of focus.   A central silvered cone is the same size as the photosphere.   It reflects the disks light into the surrounding collar where it is absorbed.   The remaining light from the corona passes through and is refocused onto the detector.

SOHO researcher, Jack Ireland, was amazed to see that one of the programs used by SOS (Registax) uses the same type of processing (wavelet) that his NASA research initiative is pioneering.

There are more dishes at GSFC than you can shake a stick at.    Data comes in from probes throughout the solar system.

A model of the planned James Webb space telescope was on show in the Goddard Visitors Centre.   With permission, we removed the protective enclosure and photographed it against an HST poster.   After removing the support in Photoshop, it looks a treat.

How do you know that a satellite will not explode when you put it into the vacuum of space?   You test it in the World's biggest vacuum chamber.   That way, if it doesn't go bang, you haven't wasted an expensive launch vehicle.   GSFC also has rooms for shaking , dropping and generally bad treating precision equipment destined for space.   They also have the World's loudest loudspeaker for simulating the noise of a Space Shuttle lift-off.   It's loud enough to crack concrete.   Fortunately it was out of action during our visit so Graham was unable to hook up his minidisk player to it.

Emilie showed us the largest clean air room in the known Universe.   Not only could you swing a cat in it, but you could swing a  space telescope with room to spare.   In fact it's really too big for any of the current projects.    Still, until somebody does come up with a use, no one has to do any dusting.

That was big, this is bigger!   G forces can wreck a satellite so NASA strap them to  this centrifuge and give them a spin.   Earlier in the year someone had failed to secure a satellite so it came off the arm and was ground into the concrete wall.     By all accounts sparks flew in more ways than one.   You can still see the scars on the wall; left as a reminder to "tighten those bolts guys!".

You know you're somewhere when you are at  NASA's nerve centre for communications.   This is largely telecommunications although the feed from HST is passed through to a room up the corridor and then to STScI in Baltimore.   This is mostly concerned with letting the President tell the Head of NASA that his budget is slashed, and letting the Head of NASA tell the President that invading aliens are about to land.   We were rally glad to see that they were still using Apollo era desks for some things, although they are rapidly being replaced by computer monitors.   Shame; there is a special sense of satisfaction to be gained by pushing buttons that light up.  We have even tried to make a few virtual ones in SOS, but it's not the same.