Tag: Canadian Space Agency

  • Thirteen Things I’m Thankful For

    If I tried to list everything I’m thankful for, it would end up being either really abstract (silliness, grace, love, freedom, etc.) or downright molecular (oxygen, water, carbon…)

    (Also, infinitely long… moreso because I’m a super-analytical, detail-oriented perfectionist, than actually because I’m grateful for that many things. I mean, I am, but what would really kill the list is the precision and thoroughness with which I would list them, and 2 feet of text later I’d give up, having only described the things that I’m thankful for that are presently on my desk.)

    I’m obviously incredibly grateful for the big things like my home and my job and those abstract and molecular things, and most of all, family and friends and puppy obviously top the list, so we’ll skip them for this list, and I’ll attempt to avoid listing components and prerequisites and broad categories, SO…

    Thirteen specific, tangible(ish), pretty random things that I am particularly grateful for at this relatively arbitrary moment in time! Alternately titled,

    “13 Assorted Nouns Lauren Gets Inordinately Excited About.“

    (in no particular order, just as they come to mind. ):

    1. My dog, Rocky.
      Ok, I just said I wasn’t going to list the dog, (twice, since he is also family… or maybe thrice since he’s also my friend!) but he is fuzzy and cuddly and delightful (and in snuggle range as I start typing this post), so apparently he’s getting included anyway. He’s a Bichon Frise, almost 12 in human years, and an impressively good communicator for someone who neither speaks words nor writes. Sometimes he’s a bad dog, but mostly he’s just a big fluffy pile of love and adorableness.
       
    2. Apple Soy Chai Lattes
      A couple months ago, I discovered Burlap & Bean offered apple among the many flavor syrups available to add to your coffee or whatever beverage. I thought, “Hmm, I bet that would be good in chai…” and holy hello was I right! It instantly became my “usual”! It is also amusing to see the baristas react, as I seem to be the first to think of it (there, at least), and they’re all intrigued, always saying, “Ooh, I’ll have to try that!” and today one guy told me he finally did, and confirmed it is absurdly delicious. Also, the one girl calls me “Apple Soy Chai Girl,” which makes me smile!
       
    3. Crochet/Knitting
      I sometimes say my attention span is as long as my yarn. My Grandma taught me the basics of crochet when I was like, 6 or so, and I figured out how to knit a few years later, so I’ve been making things with yarn long enough that it’s second nature– the simple repetitive motion only occasionally requires conscious thought, but keeps my hands busy while I pay attention to other things (teachers/presenters/tv/conversations/etc.). It provides a point of focus — a sort of tether to reality, keeping my scatterbrain from wandering — and you get a scarf or something out of it! And I’m the sort who mostly makes up my own patterns, so the figuring out a project/design is a fun, half art/half math puzzle to solve!
       
    4. Graph Paper
      For the aformentioned design puzzling, not just for crochet projects, but for sketching out layouts and all sorts of ideas!
       
    5. Comfortable Shoes
      Almost every day, I wear either my tan sneakery shoes or my black sandals. The sneakers are barely sneakers… soft lightweight almost sock-like sort-of running shoes with elastic instead of laces. The sandals are near-magical slides which I’ve worn pretty much nonstop when its warm-ish for the last 5 years, including a month in Taiwan where we walked way too much, and they’re holding up really well, and perfectly molded to my feet. Every time I wear any other shoes, I’m reminded of how awesome these two pairs are! They feel less like shoes, and more like hugs for my feet.
       
    6. NASAtweetups and such
      NASAtweetups, CSAtweetups, NASAsocials, rogue tweetups, really any gathering of “people from the internet” is bound to be a good time! I’ve written about this before, but I’m especially and specifically grateful to NASA and CSA (and other space agencies doing the same that I haven’t been to yet) for hosting us spacetweeps, educating and entertaining us — and showing us how amazing both the universe, and mankind’s endeavors to explore it, are. And generally making field trips for grown-ups a thing that exists.
       
    7. Electric/Heated Blankets
      The heat in our house doesn’t really reach upstairs (which is confusing, since I was pretty sure heat rises), so a blanket that actually produces heat is very welcome in my bed!
       
    8. Netflix/Hulu/TV on the internet in general
      I love tv, but I can never remember to watch current shows when they air, so I’d miss at least half the episodes if that was the only option. And since I’m all about character development and the long-term plot, I can’t stand seeing episodes out of order or missing them, so I’d pretty much just never watch anything good until it came out on DVD. And since I’m broke, that wouldn’t happen either. So Hulu and individual networks’ steaming video (and occasionally filling in the gaps with sources of questionable legality) are miraculous for keeping up with current shows. And if it’s too old for Hulu, it’s probably on Netflix or will be soon. I can mad marathon all previous seasons of as many shows as I want (and movies too) for a very reasonable $8 a month (which I have now roped my parents into paying, since the whole family started using my account)!
       
    9. My Car, Neil
      I like him. He is cute and shiny and blue and has a cd player and everything works! But I’ve already rambled on about that a bit too… it’s nice having a car that isn’t perpetually breaking!
       
    10. Tote Bags
      There is something to be said for purses and computer bags and cases for various things — consistency and organization and such. But I’m a big fan of simple tote bags. Like one giant-ass pocket you throw everything you need in, sling it over your shoulder, and off you go! Any shape/size/color/design you want, they probably make that tote bag, and if not, you can get one printed! And they’re cheap, so you can keep a bunch handy! And if you spill something on it, or something leaks inside it, just throw it in the wash and dump your stuff in another one. Plus, unlike more structured bags, which stay pretty much the same size whether they’re empty or full, a simple cloth tote bag only takes up as much space as the stuff inside it! *magic*
       
    11. Connectivity
      Ok, this is getting dangerously close to that abstract territory I said I’d avoid, but it’s simultaneously astounding and easy to take for granted, so it’s worth a mention. It’s tangible in smartphones and tablets, anyway. So many places have WiFi, and cellular data networks are finally getting fast enough to be worth using, so the internet is accessible pretty much anywhere, any time! And with technical connectivity comes human connectedness. A certain amount of paradoxical disconnectedness too, but things like Twitter and Skype and Wikipedia and Coursera and Trello and a thousand other sites and apps connect me with people and books and knowledge and tools in every area of human experience and the world geographically! Clearly, I’m a nerd about these sorts of things (and all the things!) but it makes me happy!
       
    12. Ukulele!
      I got a cheap but decently nice uke off eBay a thousand years or so ago, and mostly it has sat on a shelf collecting dust, but lately I’ve been playing it more, and while I still suck, it’s fun! Small enough for my stupidtiny hands to handle easily, and only four strings to keep track of, so I’m having better luck learning than on guitar. I wrote a song for/inspired by Rachel’s sweet kiddo, Gwenny, about a sassy pterodactyl, and managed to figure out a suitable chord progression for it! And theoretically, some day, I will know more than 4 chords! It’s fun!
       
    13. Cup-a-noodles
      Yes, instant ramen in a styrofoam cup. For 50 cents or less. I am poor and like hot food at work. Don’t judge me. Mmm salty chicken-flavor noodles of cheapness.
       

  • MarsRoadtrip Part 5: CSAtweetup

    Made it back the next morning only a few minutes late (for which I am rather impressed with myself, running on 2.5 hours sleep and not being able to remember/find what time I was supposed to get there), and settled in for another awesome day of spacey goodness!

    We started off with Gilles Leclerc, Director General of Space Exploration, welcoming us and giving an overview of the Canadian Space Agency and what all it’s up to! CSA is a small agency, with around 700 employees and an annual budget of only $250 million. (Curiosity cost about 10 times that!) But – by partnering with other/larger space agencies (Canada is the only non-European cooperating member country of the ESA… Austrialia is probably jealous!), and keeping focused on specific areas of expertise (especially robotics and small science satellites, rather than developing their own launch vehicle), CSA is able to make significant contributions and maintain a major presence in the space industry, maximizing the bang for their buck!

    Next, we had a special surprise call-in guest – Astronaut David Saint-Jacques (@Astro_DavidS)! He was actually on vacation with his family, but was kind enough to interrupt his vacation and take some time out to chat with us spacetweeps over Skype! Very nice guy! He’s an engineer, medical doctor, astrophysicist, and commercially licensed pilot, who was selected as part of the 20th Astronaut class in 2009, and is currently stationed in Houston, awaiting his turn in space! When asked what the hardest part of being an astronaut is, he said it was maintaining balance – not totally geeking out over how cool it is and completely losing yourself in your job! I bet! (And he hasn’t even been to space yet! Just wait…) 😀 The best part is the people you work with. 🙂

    Then it was tour time! The first stop was the Space Technologies Lab – an area with a bunch of cleanrooms where they develop and assemble small satellites and such (sensitive work that they did not want photographed… tweeting was okay though!) Favorite factoid from this bit of the day was that satellites in Low Earth Orbit can turn themselves using electromagnets and the Earth’s magnetic field! (But satellites in geo-stationary orbits can’t, because they’re too far out and the magnetic field isn’t strong enough out there!)

    In the Space and Planetary Sciences Lab, we saw the Earth version of MSL’s Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS)! (Which, my brain actually absorbed this time, takes in small soil samples and analyzes the contents for evidence of past – or maybe even present – life on Mars!) This version is briefcase-sized, while the one on Curiosity is about the size of a Rubik’s Cube, because the one they sent to space needed to be as compact and lightweight as possible, but without launch restrictions, this only needed to be portable enough for people to carry so they were able to make it larger and more powerful for faster results! (They take it out to test a variety of samples on Earth, to which they’ll compare the results we get from Mars!)

    Visiting Research Fellow, Pablo Sobron Sanchez, explains the APXS (Earth edition)!

    Curiosity has a limited number of “clean samples” it can take – it only has 24 containers, which can be reused, but residue from earlier tests may contaminate the new sample, giving less accurate results – so they have to be somewhat selective with the samples they take. To decide where they most want to test, they’ll use data from the other MSL instruments and cameras, as well as images we’re already getting from various orbiters. All of those images are actually available on the internet for anyone to look at, and if you’re so inclined, to study and do science with!

    Next, we met Operations Engineer Mario Ciaramicoli, in a massive sort of split-level garage-y-type robotics lab with a whole lot going on! The upper part of the room was dominated by a full-scale engineering model of the Canadarm2, which is currently in service on the International Space Station. (Its predecessor served aboard and retired with the space shuttles – Endeavour’s Canadarm recently returned to Canada and is chillin’ in the lobby!)

    Canadarm2 is a couple meters longer than the original, has an extra joint and greater rotation in all of its joints, and was designed so that its joint motors and computers and such can be replaced on orbit for much simpler repairs and maintenance. However, the coolest part, to me, is that it doesn’t have one fixed “shoulder” end, with the “hand” opposite – rather, it has identical ends that can both attach to the station or go off and be the working end, or even trade roles back and forth, with the acting “hand” grappling onto the station somewhere else, the “shoulder” releasing and becoming the hand, and so on, to “walk” around the station for greater access! It can also connect with Dextre, the smaller two-armed robot, for more complicated work that would otherwise require an astronaut to go EVA, but can instead be done by the robot, controlled from inside the station!

    We got to see the Mission Control room from which Canadarm2 and Dextre operations on ISS are supported, as well as the simulator where all the engineers, astronauts/cosmonauts, and mission/flight controllers who will be involved with using the arm come for training before they can be certified as robotics operators, and go on to more specific training for their particular missions!

    A major part of Mario’s job is preparing the new programming for missions… basically every time they use the arm, they have to write a new program to operate the arm! For tasks similar to ones they’ve done before, it’s pretty simple to just update the numbers for component masses and other parameters, but for something totally new, they have to pretty much start from scratch, and it takes months and months of programming and running simulations to verify it will do what they tell it to when they try it for real in space! Craziness!

    Our Canadian Astronauts poster in the hall
    Sweet ISS mural!

    Our last destination for the morning was the exhibit hall, where they have models of a bunch of Canadian satellites and other projects Canada contributed to. Senior Engineer Marie-Josée Potvin gave us the rundown of all the ones present, and also stuck around to eat lunch with us!

    This model of RADARSAT-1 is actually hanging over the main lobby, but there’s another smaller of the same in with the rest!
    Tweeps learning about the James Webb Space Telescope
    Model of the James Webb Space Telescope
    Microvariability & Oscillations of Stars (MOST) microsatellite
    Marie-Jos̩e explains SCISAT (actual size!) monitors the ozone by sucking some in through a small hole on the underside (not that big one Рit radiates heat)

    After lunch, it was rover time! We heard from the folks in the Exploration Development and Operations Centre, where they’re working on the infrastructure to monitor/support/control robotic exploration missions from the ground. They decided to go with workstations around the perimeter of the room and a large table in the center, for a more collaboration-friendly layout for the control room than the traditional rows of consoles – you’re monitoring your station, discover something that needs discussion and a decision, so you can just turn around to confer with your team at the table, and then go back and do your thing! (Makes sense to me!)

    We paused in the Rover Integration Facility (read: giant rover garage/workshop) on our way outside, and saw a variety of components and rovers, including a Jeep-sized one with seats that can be driven remotely, as a robotic explorer, but could also be used for manned exploration in the future!

    Outside, we discovered the Analogue Terrain – a big field of sand and gravel with various inclines and heaps of rocks, approximating a variety of ground conditions similar to those one might encounter on Mars or the moon! And boy were we glad it was a nice day out (gorgeous, in fact), because ROVERS! Two of them were out playing in their big sandbox – okay, engineers with RC controllers were calling the shots, but ROVERS!

    They drove them around a while and showed us the nifty things they could do to get around better, and we checked out the mobile version of the remote operations center.

    Then, at some point, I look back over and the rovers are coming over to visit! Turned out, they were going to be part of the group for our group picture! We got to check them out up-close-and-personal, and I even got to hug one! (Yes, I’m a nerd. We know this. But ROVERS! For machines, they’re adorable!)

    MSL Curiosity CSAtweetup group photo in the Analogue Terrain (Photo credit: CSA)

    Eventually we headed back inside to hear about the Artic Expedition that engineering grad student Raymond Francis (@CosmicRaymond) took part in earlier this summer, to determine whether a certain very large hole in the ground on Victoria Island was, in fact, an impact crater! It was an especially exciting and successful expedition, because they not only confirmed that it is and impact crater, but also found it’s basically a really good one (to study), because it has excellent examples of geological features only found in impact craters and… general geological interesting-ness. (My brain was kind of overflowing at this point, so pardon the particulars not quite sticking.) Besides the geologists one would logically send on this sort of expedition, the team also included Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who is not a geologist – they were training him in the basics of conducting a geological survey (I think… pretty much), so when he’s hypothetically off exploring some other planet, he’ll know what to look for to take photos or samples of that will be interesting for geologists back home to study! Neat!

    We ended the day with Jean-Claude Piedboeuf, Director of Space Exploration Development, discussing the future of space exploration in general, and of course Canada’s in particular! The near future is obviously going to be humans sticking to the ISS while we learn more about the effects of living in space long-term, and robots doing the planetary exploration. More long-term, as you might expect, we want to get to Mars, and back to the moon, but in what order, and whether or not to throw a station at the Lagrange Point between Earth and the Moon into the mix or not depends who you ask! I can’t wait to see what happens… 🙂

    A timeline/overview chart of the various agencies’ & companies’ planned space exploration missions for the upcoming decade

    As we were “leaving” (which bore a striking resemblance to “not leaving,” as we just kept pausing and chatting!) I discovered that @Colin_H_Hart goes to Ursinus College, which is 14 miles from my office! (Plus, he happens to currently living in Cleveland, where I had also just come from.) Funny how that happens… going to another country and meeting someone from basically back home! Small world. 🙂 Turns out we were also staying in the same hotel, and he was car-less, so I gave him a lift back, and he introduced me to a deli he’d discovered around the corner that makes very tasty sandwiches!

    Headed back to the hotel, ate, watched the Curiosity press conference and popped into the Twitter for a bit, and then sleep deprivation punched me in the face and I went to bed pretty early. In the morning I packed up, checked out, and began the long drive back.

    The long drive back

    It was actually only about 45 minutes to the border heading straight south (as opposed to the couple hours meandering east along the Canadian side of the border my route coming from Ohio had taken), but then I sat in traffic/line for probably a solid hour waiting to get through the immigration checkpoint. (There had only been one other car in sight at the little boondocksy crossing I’d come in through!) When I did get up to the booth, I thought it was hilarious that the guy asked exactly the same questions as the one who let me in had – not just the obvious “Where are you from?” and “What are you doing in Canada?” but when I answer that with “Going to an event at the Canadian Space Agency,” they both responded, “Are you some kind of engineer or something?” What? Nobody but engineers ever goes to the CSA? 😛 Guess they never heard of tweetups!

    The next few hours were boring, but pretty… way-upstate New York is pretty much mountains and trees and not much else. (Not even proper food at the rest-stops, just vending machines!) Other than being a bit hungry by the time I got back to civilization, it was a nice drive! And then my GPS stopped cooperating just as I got new NYC, so I missed the exit I needed and accidentally took a little detour to the Bronx, and got turned around in some sketchy part of New Jersey trying to find my way back to a road that would take me to PA. (Anywhere in PA, just get me out of Jersey!) Eventually made it back to the Garden State Parkway, which at least went in the general direction of things I know.

    After a little while, I saw a reststop had really cheap gas, so I went to stop and fill up… only right as I got on the exit ramp, I felt a thump that made me pretty sure I’d just gotten a flat tire. The service station was right there anyway, so I rolled over at a crawl, and asked the attendant to look at it… turned out it was not only flat, but had shredded! GONE. Lovely.

    Now, I’m perfectly capable of changing my own tire, but I’d been driving for about 10 hours at this point and feeling lost in freakin’ Jersey for the last while, so I was at my wit’s end, and the attendant said he’d help me change it if I could wait a few minutes, so I did. It took a little longer than I would have liked, but he came back over, hauled the spare out of its hole in the back of my car… and said he’d be back again in a few more minutes. I was tired, so I figured whatever, and waited. After rather a long while, I wondered where the hell he’d gotten to, and asked one of the other guys pumping gas… who said the guy’d left! Jackass!

    None of the rest of them seemed inclined to help me out, and by this point I was too tired and flippin’ angry to think straight, much less figure out the stupid jack, so I tried calling AAA – but apparently New Jersey won’t let them on certain roads, so they had to transfer me to some NJ highway something. I was just about to get them to send somebody out, when some random guy getting gas saw me on the phone and staring at my retard car looking like I wanted to kill something mechanical – “I know that look,” he said – and asked me if I wanted help. I gladly accepted, he swapped the tire-less wheel for the donut in about 3 minutes, made sure it had air, and reminded me not to go too fast on it and to pay it forward. I assured him I wouldn’t and would, respectively, thanked him profusely, finally got that cheap gas, and limped off home at 45mph with Marian Call’s “From Alaska” disc (my new comfort/sanity music) on repeat!

    Despite a mildly craptacular ending, it was an awesome trip! I had expected to be pretty exhausted and sick of driving after all that, but seems even 6 days away, 1700 miles, and a blown tire didn’t wear out my roadtrip love!

    Thanks to the lovely folks at NASA Glenn and the Canadian Space Agency for your hospitality, and to everybody behind Curiosity and NASA and CSA in general for doing awesome things for us spacetweeps to geek out over! I am so excited for all Curiosity’s pictures and science over the next two (and hopefully several more) years! Happy roving! 🙂

  • MarsRoadtrip Part 4: Dare Mighty Things

    It is a very strange feeling to drive to a government building – in a foreign country – in the middle of the night. Felt slightly mischievous, but the security guard didn’t seem to mind! Magalie led me to the press auditorium, where I found a familiar face (@datachick) and an even more familar view – a NASAtv view of a mission control room projected up on a screen!

    JPL Mission Control
    The traditional launch peanuts

    We heard a bit about the APXS, Canada’s contribution to Curiosity’s assortment of science instruments, from Director of Space Exploration Projects Stéphane Desjardins (the fellow on the right), but it was hard to pay attention to much other than the feed from JPL when we were just minutes away from Curiosity’s actual “7 minutes of terror!” – which, by the way, if you haven’t seen the “trailer” yet, seriously, go watch it immediately. Or better yet… here:

    Schrödinger’s Rover

    Mars is far away (in case you didn’t know 😛 ). So far, in fact, as they mentioned in the video, that even traveling the speed of light, signals take 14 minutes to reach earth. It was kind of nutty (besides the traditional peanuts being passed around mission control) knowing the little rover actually was on Mars for seven minutes before we even heard she’d entered the atmosphere… we knew she’d reach the surface around 1:17am (Eastern), but we wouldn’t find out whether she had landed safely or crashed until 1:31! Eep!

    So 14 minutes delayed, JPL narrated Curiosity’s Entry, Descent, and Landing. Heartbeat tones, cruise stage separation, more heartbeat tones, entry interface, guided entry bank reversals, ballast jettison, parachute deploy (applause), wrist mode nominal, heat shield separation, back shell separation, powered flight, standing by for skycrane, skycrane has started (cheers), “Tango Delta Nominal,” touchdown confirmed – and the room exploded in applause, cheers, hugs, tears, and high-fives! Curiosity landed safely on Mars!!!!!!!!

    Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) (201208050013HQ)
    Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
    Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) (201208050016HQ)
    Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

    Let me repeat that:

    Curiosity landed safely on Mars!!!!!!!!!

    Hugs all around! (Photo Credit: Brian Van Der Brug / LA Times)
    Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) (201208050014HQ)
    Steltzner is the man. (Photo Credit: NASA / Bill Ingalls)
    Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) (201208050018HQ)
    Awww… (Photo Credit: NASA / Bill Ingalls)
    All the emotions! (Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

    It was perfect. Curiosity went exactly where she was supposed to go, arrived at Mars right on course, the crazy/brilliant EDL sequence went exactly how it was supposed to, the Odyssey orbiter was exactly where they hoped it would be to relay data all the way down, and Curiosity was safe and happy as pie on the surface of freaking Mars, very close to the center of the target landing zone, and communicating right away! Woohoooo!!!

    And all of like 30 seconds later… “We got thumbnails!”

    One of the rear hazcams sent a 64×64 pixel thumbnail photo showing one of the wheels and the horizon of Mars! Seriously, it’s been 30 years since anybody was that excited about a thumbnail image! (But hey, it was entirely probable they wouldn’t get any images for at least 2 hours, and we started seeing them just minutes after landing, so they/we are allowed to be excited!

    It was quickly followed by the full 256×256 version, showing a wheel and the Martian horizon as clearly as the dusty dust cover would allow… and then another shot from another hazcam – this one showing Curiosity’s shadow!

    Bill Nye when Curiosity landed
    We tweeps at the CSA, along with the team at JPL, and I’m sure space nerds round the world, clapped and cheered, and clapped and cheered some more, as a Mini-Cooper-sized spacecraft-turned-roving-science-lab plopped onto another world, and promptly sent back a handful of tiny black and white photos of dirt. And we were never so excited to see dirt. BECAUSE IT’S MARS DIRT. AND CURIOSITY IS ALIVE AND SAFE AND AWESOME.

    Bobak is leaking. Joy. And awesomeness. (Photo Credit: Brian Van Der Brug / LA Times)
    =)

    Eventually the broadcast ended and we left to go get a bit of sleep before the rest of the tweetup! After some coffee with the security guards and a nice man with a crow bar resolving the slight glitch of my keys being locked in my car, I made it back to my hotel and somehow managed to get unconscious for a couple hours.

  • MarsRoadtrip Part 3: More Driving

    The GPS once again proves itself retarded.

    As I was leaving the restaurant, I remembered I needed to get gas, so I poked the “Gas Station” button on the GPS and followed its lead… but the place it took me was not a gas station… looked more like an airport rental car place, so it probably did have gasoline, just not any to share with me.

    So I tried again… and this one didn’t even vaguely resemble a gas station!

    No longer trusting the gorram gizmo, I looked at the map of all the places it was claiming were gas stations, and saw that two of them were on the same road. I figured at least one of them had to actually be for real, so headed that direction. I arrived at the first one, and lo and behold, an actual-factual gas station! Slightly shifty and deserted-looking, but a gas station nonetheless, so I pull in and go to get some gas… but there isn’t any. The pumps were on and functioning, there just wasn’t anything to pump. -_-

    So I got back in and continued on to the next place, which finally actually had gasoline for my sad little car. Filled up, got back in, punched in my uncle’s address, and headed out.

    Of course, instead of taking me back to where I’d gotten off the highway near Glenn, it took me further into Cleveland (pretty much the opposite direction of where I really wanted to go, only I didn’t realize that for a while) and I never quite figured out what it had in mind, because when it got me back near anything resembling a highway, half the turns it wanted me to make were blocked off for construction!

    Eventually, no thanks to the GPS, I found my way to a road pointed in the general direction of my uncle’s and found my way back. Oy!

    [Insert sleep here.]

    To Canada!

    The following morning, I loaded up and headed off again, Canada-bound! About 11 hours on the road… not much to report! I-90 is long. (And boring. Thank goodness for audiobooks! (Or really, just the one since it turned out to be really long!)) Followed it along Lake Erie for the rest of Ohio, through the weird little nub of Pennsylvania, and into New York. I thought about detouring to Niagara Falls, but decided it was gonna be a long enough day already without a 2 hour side trip, so just kept on I-90 over to Syracuse, and then 81 up to Canada!

    For some reason, they let me in 🙂 so I kept going! It was kind of wacky to see everything marked in kilometers and kph… luckily they also included miles for the first while for us silly southerners. Soon every sign in sight was in French, and it really started to feel like I was in another country! (Which is kind of hilarious, because in the grand scheme of Canada, I was barely over the border!)

    By the time I was driving through Montreal on the “Autoroute Transcanadienne” it was dark, and the moon was hanging low and huge and gorgeous, right in front of my face, honestly the biggest and deepest colored I’ve ever seen it… it kind of felt more like another planet than another country!

    At long last, I made it to my hotel, (assured the girl at the desk I had not, in fact, cancelled my reservation,) got to my room, showered, and crashed! Nice room, comfy bed, epic sleep.

    I didn’t have to arrive at the Canadian Space Agency for the first installment of the CSA tweetup and Curiosity’s landing until midnight Sunday night/Monday morning, so I slept in Sunday and it was delicious.

    I thought about going into Montreal to explore/sightsee, but couldn’t figure out what I wanted to see, and figured with my luck with the GPS lately, I’d spend most of the day lost, and I was still pretty beat, so I just hung out at the hotel for the day, watching the only thing on TV that wasn’t the Olympics or in French (or the Olympics in French) – which turned out to be “Say Yes to the Dress” and then “Toddlers in Tiaras”… so, not terribly interesting, but addictive in a train-wreck sort of way – and tweeting and reading and generally relaxing!

  • MarsRoadtrip Part 1: Mars or Bust!

    Two tweetups in one week? Yes please! 😀

    Okay, so technically one was a “Social” – NASA decided to start letting Facebook and Google+ followers in on the #NASAtweetup awesomeness, so they changed the name to #NASASocial – but Canada’s was still #CSAtweetup!

    Two days after Thanksgiving, NASA launched the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) “Curiosity” rover on an 8.5 month journey to our dusty red neighbor – a journey we knew would end, one way or the other, around quarter after 1am (EDT) Sunday night/Monday morning. In June, as we spacetweeps suspected/hoped, they announced there would be a NASAsocial for the Mars landing, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California (where Curiosity was built)! I registered, of course, but didn’t get selected.

    I don’t know if it was the plan all along, or if they were just overwhelmed by the response, but a couple days later they added 5 more NASAsocials, all at the same time (Friday, August 3rd) at different NASA centers! (The first multi-center NASAsocial!) Soon, the Canadian Space Agency announced they’d have a tweetup too, during the landing and the following day.

    I, of course, registered for everything, figuring I’d probably worn out my welcome/luck by now and wouldn’t get in to any official events, but was fine too since there were epic #RogueTweetup plans in the works…

    But then I got one of those lovely confirmation notices… from Canada! So the question was if I could get my passport renewed in time! …and then, I got ANOTHER confirmation notice, this one from NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio!

    Cue a moment of panic as I tried to decide which I’d rather go to – be part of the first multi-center social, or be in a space agency for the landing itself? (Surely I couldn’t go to both… two tweetups for the same landing?!)

    But then the “Why the heck not?!” sector of my brain kicked in with the realization that this wasn’t exactly trying to be in two places at once (there’s a whole Saturday in between!), and neither NASA nor CSA had said anything to the contrary, so theoretically, I could do both… It was just a matter of sorting the logistics.

    Sorting the logistics

    I looked at flights, but then remembered I’m not quite old enough to make rental cars a viable option, and the thought of trying to mooch rides between airports and hotels and space centers in two different cities (countries!) when I wasn’t sure who I’d know where, plus getting home from the Philly airport at the end (since my family’d be on vacation by the time I got back)… well, it sounded like it would be less exhausting/stressful to just drive!

    A quick consultation with the GoogleyMaps confirmed each leg of the journey would be a full-but-reasonable-day’s drive (about 8/10/8 hours, respectively), and I like driving and traveling alone… plus, I mean, what’s the difference between my typical work day, in which I spend 8 or 9 hours sitting in a chair staring at a screen, and spending those hours sitting in my car staring out the windshield?!

    So I declared it a plan, and surprisingly, though they didn’t see the appeal, neither parent tried very hard to dissuade me. My dad informed me that my uncle’s house is within a reasonable commute to NASA Glenn, so I called him up and made plans to crash there for the first stop, and thanks to recommendations from CSAtweetup’s lovely organizer, Magalie, I found a nice and very reasonably priced hotel near CSA HQ, so I had the “somewhere to sleep” thing covered.

    The only other question mark in this nutty plan was whether I could get my passport renewed in time for Canada to let me in at all, much less to a secure government building… an extra $60 and applying in person will get you a passport pretty quickly, but the earliest available appointment was Monday morning the week I’d be leaving, so I was a bit nervous, but it turns out, the Philadelphia Passport Agency is seriously on their game!

    I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get there, park, find it, and get through security, so I left plenty of cushion time… and ended up arriving at 9:05, when my appointment wasn’t until 10. Despite warnings that they wouldn’t let you in more than 15 minutes early, and you could be waiting several hours regardless of your appointment time, they let me in right away, checked to make sure I had everything I needed and gave me a number, I waited about half an hour, had my “appointment” (through a bullet-proof ticket window), and was walking back to my car before my scheduled appointment time, assured my passport would be ready to pick up on Wednesday morning! (which it was, and the return visit took all of 3 minutes.) Solidly impressive for government bureaucracy!

    Passport in hand, I *finally* felt free to get excited! I loaded up the iThing with music and audiobooks, threw some clothes and my toothbrush in the car, and roadtripped the heck out of Thursday!