Thursday, April 2, 2009

Victory



Despite getting cut eight parabolas short, crew two collected all the necessary data and managed to capture some zero-G yoga moves on camera. Congratulations.

Kyle flew with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln team at the same time and assisted them with an experiment on the flow of lunar soil simulant through a hopper. It was lucky he was there, because they ended up needing an extra person to manage the functioning of the solenoid. For those of you who don't know what a solenoid is, refer to the lovely words of Bob Davidson:

"Solenoid is an electromagnet that consists of a coil of wire wrapped around an iron core, and when you energize the coil it creates a magnetic field that can be used to move other things that are magnetic," said Bob. So when Kyle flipped on the solenoid, the slider on the hopper opened to allow the lunar soil simulant to flow through and the Nebraska team to collect their data. While Kyle would have preferred to work with his home team, he was happy to help and get exposed to different research and engineering students from another university.


1 comment:

  1. Congratulations on your experiment. It looks like you got a really cool experiment and got a really great experience. I'm interested in learning more about what conclusions you reached in your experiment and what data you gathered. Is there someone I can contact or somewhere where I can find the information? Thank you and congratulations again!

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