Okay so maybe the beginning so far isn’t the most exciting but it’s an essential part of getting the major part underway! My beginning was a flight from Houston to Washington Dulles (IAD) airport where I had to connect to fly to Beijing. It was a crazy week and honestly one of the more crazy of my life EVER! We had packers and movers at our house all week, all sorts of “good bye” events since when we return from Gobi we will pretty much immediately be moving from Houston to Annapolis, and Ken’s final flight in the T-38 just a half a day before I had to leave. Needless to say by the time I got to the airport Friday (well before the birds woke up) I was worn out! That is actually kind of a nice way to be when you have lots of hours of flying! The first flight was a piece of cake – I amused myself by typing a few emails and reading a few of the many magazines I’d brought along that I hadn’t had time to read. I was a little nervous because it was an extremely tight turn for me at IAD (meaning very short time to get to my next airplane before it left.). Luckily my worries were unnecessary I got there with plenty of time. The next flight was the long one – about 14 hours… Still shorter than my trip to Australia for Mission Discovery in January. I got a bit of sleep in, read some magazines and watched lots of movies. Since I was wore out from the week just “chilling” worked out jut fine without me getting too pensive. Upon landing in Beijing I’ve had a 16 hour layover here so I got a hotel and got some proper sleep. Now I’m awake and headed back to the airport to meet up with most of the rest of the group and head to Mongolia! Ken will meet us a day late in Mongolia due to some obligations back home. I promise the rest of my blogs should be more interesting than this one but I wanted to keep you with me every step of the journey as much as I can. Again my posting will be dependent on ability to do so (in fact I had to wait til I got tothe first hotel in Mongolia to post this one because China doesn’t allow any sort of social media – Faebook is totally blocked as are other social media sites!) but I will do my best I promise! Stay tuned!!!
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My Bags are Packed….
My Bags are Packed, I’m Ready To Go…
What can I say I have that song in my head this morning (If you haven’t figured it out yet the song is “Leaving On A Jetplane.” The movers are about to show up and start packing our house up for our big move to Annapolis. As I mentioned in my previous post, because of this I had to pack for our Transit of Venus Adventure more ahead of time than usual. So as I started this post… my bags are packed… okay well mostly packed 
I am still waiting to 1 or 2 more items in there. I tried to keep it as minimal as possible though.
I think I’ve done okay with my packing… I’ve got some comfortable “convertible” hiking pants, a pair of shorts, a bunch of t-shirts (mostly NASA/mission logo ones), hiking boots, hat, sunscreen etc. Still waiting on my long sleeve sun protectant shirt but North Face claims it will be here tomorrow!
I can’t believe the adventure begins in just a few days! Can’t wait to share it with all of you!!
Getting Very Excited About Gobi!
Well to say life is crazy here would be one heck of an understatement but for those of you who know me you won’t be the least bit surprised at craziness in my life… seems that’s pretty much typical life for me!!! But now is even crazier than usual with our impending move. The movers will be here to pack us all up starting a week from today so I have to be packed for my next ISSET Adventure prior to that (or else everything I need will be in a box on a truck headed for Annapolis which won’t do me any good at all!!)
To that end I have started – and to be fair mostly finished! – my packing for the Gobi Desert Adventure. I need to go buy 1 or 2 more things and I am waiting on 1 more thing to arrive in the mail but it’s incredible how close it’s getting! Packing for this was one of the more interesting packing jobs I have done since I’ll be honest I was a little perplexed on what all to pack! Hopefully I did okay!
Can’t wait to keep you all updated on the progress of the adventure! I leave next Friday (June 1st)!
Wanna help us out at King’s College Mission Discovery?
There are so many exciting things happening with ISSET these days and while the King’s College Mission Discovery is not the next exciting thing in line I wanted to post how you can help us with this event if you have any interest in doing so!
The King’s College Mission Discovery is going to be absolutely amazing! This Mission Discovery will have a Biomedical Focus and we will have world acclaimed speakers about space and biomedical for our attendees to learn from (including an astronaut!)
http://www.isset.org/mission_discovery_kings.html
So how can you help? So glad you asked! Here’s a list of ideas for you to consider…
- Help us spread the word! Post the link to your pages. Email it to your friends and colleagues.
- Sponsor a student to attend
- Do you think you have something to offer in presentation at the camp? Let us know! We love to have as many people as are willing and appropriate to present to give the attendees as much info as possible!
- Do you have a business? Or maybe even you as an individual just want to do this – Help us out by sponsoring some “items” for the camp. Here are some more ideas for that…
- Various items to use as prizes. We have daily awards and a big overall award for the week so we need items of all varieties and values. (We especially like space items – mission patches, posters etc. but honestly we are open to all ideas!)
- Snacks and drinks for the week for the students
- Dinners for the week at restaurants for the Mission Discovery Team
- School supplies – we need markers, colored pencils, tape, pens, paper, sticky tack, scissors
- Airfare – to fly the Mission Discovery Team in
- Hotel nights – the Mission Discovery Team needs a place to sleep at night!
- T-Shirts – ideally we’d like to have a t-shirt for every attendee with the various sponsors on the back of the shirt
Obviously the idea of Mission Discovery is to spread the good word about STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) subjects to students – the more items we have sponsored the more money we have to spend on the students and also the more students we can allow to attend without any fees. If you are in the UK, ISSET is a registered non-profit so you get the bonus of a tax benefit for any donation. We are working to get a US version of an ISSET non-profit set-up so we can offer that same benefit to US donors. Of course we want to spread the good word about your donation (because we would be so appreciative!) so there would be some extra benefits for you based on the value of your donation. If you are interested in knowing more please email me at mham@isset.org and I can send you more details!
Sorry I’ve been scarce!
Hi everyone!
I am really sorry I haven’t blogged in awhile I was just so busy with the 2 student groups here in Houston that it took me more than a week to almost get caught up with everything I’d had to put on the back burner. (I say almost because I am still working to catch up and to get ready to embark on more amazing ISSET adventures this summer!)
The second week of students in Houston was amazing as well! We had lots of great outings and they got to talk with a wide variety of NASA engineers, instructors, scientists and astronauts. The presentation from astronaut TJ Creamer was honestly perhaps the best I’ve ever seen and was such a treat for the students to get to see that! I’m so excited to have meet so many amazing people from the various schools. (And its as great to see the teachers who I had known from before too!)
Up next on my horizon? Transit of Venus in the Gobi Desert and Mission Discovery in July! More about all that and my Message to the Moon in the near future I promise!!
Join us on one of our adventures – I can pretty much guarantee you won’t regret it!!
An Awesome Week with the Awesome Students from Cyfarthfa
Well I had the best of intentions of writing all about the week but time just got away from me. Instead of trying to go back and recreate specific details I’ll give you the high-level commentary and try to do better with this next group’s trip!
The students got to see all sorts of stuff….
- Behind the Scenes Tour of Johnson Space Center (Sorry I don’t have the pictures of this but hopefully they will post some of theirs!) which they found amazing!
- Toured about Space Center Houston
- Challenger Mission at Houston Museum of Natural Science (They did amazing and had a VERY successful mission); They also toured about the Museum in general
- A fantastic talk at Rice University from Dr. David Alexander
- Moody Gardens – they toured the Rainforest and Aquarium Pyramids and had talks about Survival in the Amazon Rainforest where they got to see some animals from there and a talk about Saving our Oceans
- Over the week they met lots of fantastic people from NASA including
- 6 astronauts
- 1 space surgeon
- 1 engineer from the exercise hardware world
- 1 physiologist
- 1 former astronaut instructor and mission controller
- Plus they went shopping and I think they bought out Hollister and Abercrombie and Fitch!!
A good time was had by all (at least I think so!) And I now have lots of new friends who I do hope to see again!
I’ll post the rest of my pictures soon to the ISSET Facebook page….
Stay tuned for updates about next week’s group from Portsmouth….
Recap of First Few Days of Student Trip to Houston
Well it’s been a fun-filled action-packed couple days so while I have had the best of intentions of blogging about the ISSET student adventures here in Houston every day I just haven’t had a spare minute to do so! I’ll try and get caught up now though!
The first day they arrived it was a bit later in the day (nearly 6:15pm by the time they got to the hotel) so there wasn’t much time. The luggage arrived first via courier and then the 3 vans full of students and 3 teachers showed up. We headed to Magnolia Café & Bakery for a quick dinner and were fortunate enough to have astronaut Steve Swanson (Swani) join us. Everyone was a bit tired however so it was an early night!
The first full day started off with a trip to the San Jacinto Monument – here’s the history portion of their trip! I have to admit in 12 years of living in Houston this was my first visit there. We toured the museum portion a bit, saw the movie “Texas Forever” and then went up to the top to the Observation Deck to check out what we could see.
We headed to Bayou Wildlife Park in Alvin for the afternoon. For anyone who has not ever been there I highly recommend checking it out if you get a chance. They have tons of animals who wander the grounds so you can pet them and feed them. Plus they have a tram ride through the park of even more animals (some they can’t exactly let wander the general areas – like the rhino!) many of which are endangered. There were some folks who weren’t so sure about getting up close and personal with the wildlife but it didn’t take very long for them to get warmed up to them! To start the wildlife adventure we had a picnic with some awesomely delicious sandwiches and cookies catered by Katherine’s Creations. Apparently a few of the resident wildlife decided that they wanted to partake too! We petted some goats and pot bellied pigs after lunch and then it was off to the tram ride where we got to see sooooooooo many animals! I am pretty sure everyone enjoyed it! (I know the adults did too!!)
The weather here in Houston has been quite warm (over 80 degrees Farenheit) so the students got to enjoy some pool time, which was certainly a big hit!
Dinner was at Barcenas Mexican Restaurant (cheese and beef enchiladas – Yum!) and we were lucky enough to have a member of the latest class of astronauts join us – Kate Rubins. Several of the students had lost of questions for her, which she was more than happy to answer.
You may have notices we have a “fluffy – stuffed” traveler with us. This is Shaun and he is the Cyfartha Geography Class Mascot of sorts. Shaun travels all about and gets his picture taken all over the place. He’s rather popular J
More soon about the rest of the week’s adventures!
Check out the ISSET Facebook Page for pictures (to be posted soon!)
www.isset.org
Michelle’s Hometown Ties
This is a little more personal of a post – hope you all don’t mind!
For those of you who have only known my in my “adult” years let me give you a little background on me that is relevant to this story… I grew up in Hobart, Indiana. (For all of you who are confused because I say I am from Chicago let me explain – Hobart is technically a Chicago suburb even though it’s in a different state. And I know no one knows where Hobart is so Chicago is the answer that makes sense when someone asks where I am from.) Hobart is fairly small in the scheme of things (less than 30,000 people) and definitely not a place one would call affluent but it was a great place to grow up. I went to Kindergarten at Foreman Elementary school but then for grades 1-5 they then switched our neighborhood to attend George Earle. I had some REALLY great teachers there… but I’ll get to that more in a moment!
While I was in Australia for Mission Discovery in January the principal of the elementary school called Joan Martin asked me if I would be willing to come and talk to the students the next time I was in town. I said sure! There are some random interesting things with that including that Joan Martin is the newest school and didn’t open until I was in high school (but I remember going into their cafeteria/gymnasium for high school cheer practice when we needed the space) and it was built to replace (in part) Foreman Elementary where I had gone to kindergarten. (It is even in the space place.) Most interesting perhaps is the principal of Joan Martin is a former classmate of mine who also cheered with me in High School – I knew her as Kacey Juzwicki but she is now Kacey Allen.
In emails between myself, Kacey and the 5th grade teacher Mrs. Beth York we were discussing the plans for the day… it took several emails for a realization to kick in for me at which point I responded “Mrs. York… Is this Miss Jones?” Lo and behold Mrs. York who is teaching 5th grade at Joan Martin Elementary is none other than Miss Jones who taught me 5th grade at George Earle Elementary!!! (George Earle has since been turned into a school for only kindergarten students and it’s all day kindergarten. My mom probably would have loved if I’d had that!!) How neat that I was going to get see my former teacher. I also learned that Mrs. Appleton who had been my 4th grade teacher was teaching 4th grade at Joan Martin!
I arrived at the school in the morning and have to admit it definitely felt odd to be going back to a Hobart elementary school to talk to students! But I was also excited at the opportunity. I hoped I could reach at least 1 kiddo and who knows maybe show them how many exciting possibilities are out there. I was thrilled to see Miss Jones (okay I know she’s Mrs. York but I just can’t help but call her Miss Jones!) and honestly she no kidding didn’t look like she had changed at all!! I spoke with the 5th grade students for nearly an hour and a half and I think it went pretty well. I had struggled with how to “illustrate” (if you will) that I was no different from any of them. I was just an ordinary kid from Hobart who decided to work my tail off and chase the dream of working at NASA. I know kids can frequently look at you like “yeah right” when you talk about how you are really the same as them. So I figured that a picture could be worth a thousand words and I pulled out some old pictures from my life in Hobart and scanned them in. I even found class pictures from Miss Jones and Mrs. Appleton’s class. Then I showed them some pictures of all the cool things I have gotten to do in both school (like flying on the Vomit Comet in College) and at work (working with all my crews, travel to amazing places etc.) and I think it was fairly effective :)
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| I had to use this picture as well because both Kacey and I are in it – Freshman Year of High School |
Then in the afternoon I talked to the entire school for a shorter period of time. But before heading to the gymnasium I got a huge treat- Mrs. Carnahan who I had for some subjects in 1st grade showed up just because she heard I was going to be there! I felt so special that she came in to see me! Mrs. C hadn’t changed at all either!!!
| Mrs. Carnahan and Me – When the heck did I grow?! |
As usual I got some fantastic questions from the students. I love to get their minds working!
It was really a treat to be able to give something back to where I grew up and to get to see some of my teachers who were so fantastic to me and always supported my dreams! I told the kids I am literally living my dreams and I feel so incredibly fortunate to be able to do so! I look forward to being able to go back to Hobart (and surrounding areas) to help excite more kids from where I am from about science and math and the possibilities that are out there if they are willing to work hard! And not just to Hobart – but to everywhere in the world!!!
Mrs. York (Miss Jones), Mrs. Appleton, Me, Mrs. Carnahan – What AMAZING teachers I had!!
The British are coming! The British are coming!
I am very excited – today 31 students (of high school age) and 3 teachers are coming to visit Houston from Cyfartha, Wales as part of a program with ISSET. They will spend some days here learning more about the space program as well as more fun and interesting stuff with science and engineering and then they will head to Florida for more of the same kind of idea including a tour at Kennedy Space Center. What an incredible trip! I grew up in the US and didn’t get to have that kind of experience until I was out of University and working for the space industry!
A sampling of things they will see and do here in Houston
- Space Center Houston
- Behind the Scenes Tour of Johnson Space Center
- San Jacinto Monument
- Bayou Wildlife Park
- A lecture from Dr. Alexander at Rice University about Space and Solar Science
- Presentations from Astronauts
- Presentations from other space scientists
- Houston Museum of Natural Science
- Challenger Center Mission
- Moody Gardens including some amazing interactive programs
A sampling of things they will do in Florida
- Kennedy Space Center Vistors Center
- A Behind the scenes tour at Kennedy Space Center
- Cape Canaveral Tour
- Kennedy Space Center Wildlife Refuge
- Meet the former Kennedy Space Center Director Jay Honeycutt
- Potentially meet some astronauts
- Brevard County Planetarium
- Astronaut Training at Astronaut Hall of Fame (Formerly Home to US Space Camp FL
Sound amazing? It is!! I am excited to be their “guide” here in Houston while Chris will be their guide in Florida. Interested in joining us for one of these? Check out the ISSET webpage to get more details
We are also hoping to plan similar trips to Washington, DC as well and also to the UK! Drop us a line and let us know what you’d be interested in!!
What shall be my first Message to the Moon?
Well it’s been a bit of a boring week for me… unfortunately I have been sick so I have been confined to my couch… What it has given me though is time to think about what I want my first Message to the Moon to be. Unfortunately in all my thinking I am still undecided – I have several things that I would like to add to be sent to the moon but what shall be my first? I know it needs to be something that has importance to me but there are several of those sorts of things that I could choose.
I suppose I will have to think a bit more to come up with the perfect first Message to the Moon from me. But in the meantime – have you thought about what your first Message to the Moon should be? If not – start thinking! Then check out the webpage…
Only a few people have had the opportunity to put their messages on the moon to this point – the Queen, some important politicians and of course the astronauts. But now you can leave a message on the moon. What a neat idea!
Back to thinking… I’ll let you know what I decide!
