More Build Phase Pictures

Taylor is drilling holes to insert the IV tubing into our plant chamber

We have three layers of boxes.  This is the middle layer that will hold the entire plant chamber box and the blue part is gortex to allow the natural exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen for the health of the plants.

This is the plant holder.  It will hold 4 rockwool sections with the plants and the big hole in the center will deliver the nutrient solution from the IV bags.  The smaller tubes will hold deliver the solution to each of the plants

This is the inner box that is the plant chamber.  The upper section will hold the plant cube.  The bottom part will hold the IV bag and the solenoid to control delivery of the solution from the IV bag and the upper section that has the big hole is covered in lexan.  Our small microcamera will be going above that to take pictures of the experiment.

Here are some more building phase pictures. 

Friday's Activities

Friday was a very busy day for the Team.  We started with badging at NASA JSC and then the students divided up into Flyers (Physiological Training) and the Ground Crew (Systems Engineering Presentations and then began an engineering Challenge).  Then, we went to orientation and finally to Ellington Hanger 990.  Students began getting their experiments ready for Monday.  We got to meet a lot of different schools today from Montanna, Wyoming, Colorado, Georgia, Wisconsin, Florida, and Texas.  This is the largest flight week the Zero gravity Office has seen with 18 different schools (some universities, some highschools).  We have some things to get figured out over the weekend on our programming of our microcontroller but we should be ready for the Test Readiness Review on Monday.  I am so proud of the team!  They are doing a great job.

Build Phase

Here is our Build Phase of our project.  This is our Plant group working to determine what kind of plant chambers we should have for our experiment box and how we would water and give nutrients to our small plants. 

Tommorow it Begins

Tomorrow begins our Zero Gravity Flight Week for our NASA HUNCH Class.  We are working on a plant growth chamber that will is VERY small and will be fitting into a 10 cm3 box.  It is part of the nanorack system and we hope it will fly with the Nanorack company to the ISS very soon.