Apparently buzzards used to circle the launch pads and one bounced off the nose of the orbiter. So they started setting up a BBQ station for buzzards to draw them away.
We're on site and ready for our briefing at #NASAsocial.
By which I mean that we are prepped to geek.
We're talking about heliophysics, which is a study of the sun and how it affects everything in the solar system. Space is filled with plasma so the things you have to worry about most are things like magnetic reconnection.
Voyager is flying through the edge of the heliosphere now, which is pretty cool. There are missions which look at auroras. Once that look at other aspects of the heliosphere.
Heliophysics is the glue that connects all the other NASA studies, because it fills the interplanetary space. And understanding our star will allow us to understand other stars better.
A single mass coronal ejection -- an explosion on the surface of the sun -- could knock out global communication. Just *one* aspect of the Parker #solorprobe is that it will help us better understand that.
Q: Did the eclipse last year affect planning for the Parker mission?
A: No, because it was so recent that everything was pretty much set. But the citizen science was incredibly useful to heliophysics as a whole.
There are several theories about why the coronosphere is hotter than the surface of the sun. The Parker probe is intended to help narrow down the answer to that.
Hearing from Phillipe Ruiz, the deputy lead engineer for the Parker #SolarProbe.
This mission predates NASA. Started as a goal in 1958. Challenges are the heat, yes, but how do you create a spacecraft that is autonomous, fault resistant & out of comm for weeks? #NasaSocial
The other thing @torybruno said was that it was hard to get a sense of scale. He felt it most when he went to the top. It's essentially a 30 story building.
The MOC was built to consolidate range control into one location. Prior to this, Each SLC had a blockhouse to serve as mission control for the launch. They were only 100 yards from the rocket.
The hard part is that of the VAB driver's job is that they can't see everything. Parts of the path are built at the max turning radius, which is 6° so they have to hit their marks very precisely.