My biggest stop on this trip is going to be NASA'a Mission Control Center. This is where they operate spacecraft that carry humans into space! My host works in the Mission Control on the International Space Station. This is where the Space Shuttle goes to bring people and supplies from Earth.
Here are pictures of the two spaceships that they control from Mission Control in Houston. The Space Shuttle:
The International Space Station:
First stop on my trip to the Mission Control was the International Space Station Mission Control Center (ISS MCC for short). Here I am standing on top of the TITAN console. Can you believe it? My host's call sign is TITAN - the same as our school mascot! What a great coincidence. In order to get the call sign of TITAN he had to work for many years training and learning. In the background you can see the astronauts on the left screen. They were talking to us during the Daily Planning Conference. It's a meeting they have with the astronauts to talk about all the stuff we have planned for them to do the next day. On the middle screen is a map of the world that shows exactly where the ISS (space station) is at any given moment. On the right screen is where we display all of the commands that we send up to the ISS and the Caution and Warning messages that alert us when there is a problem.
The next two pictures are of me taking a closer look at what was going on with the TITAN's console. This is where all of the computers on the space station are controlled! Boy, it was a lot of stuff to look at, but it was very intersting. I think I may try to work at NASA some day. Mike told me that I need to study math and science which is good because I like both of those! In the second picture you can see the astronaut's activities (timeline) on the right. They sure are busy all the time.
Here I an helping out a flight controller. Her name is Christine and her call sign is ATLAS.
Here I am posing in front of a picture of the space station. The space station orbits the Earth 200 miles above the ground. It travels completely around the Earth between 15 and 16 times per day at a speed of about 17,500 miles per hour! At that speed, the space station can travel from Taylor Primary School to downtown Indianapolis in just over 9 seconds!
After visition the space station mission control, I went upstairs to a place called Apollo Mission Control. This is the room that the flight controllers were in when the astronauts walked on the moon!
Here is a picture of the first men walking on the moon - Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin - in the year 1969.
