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among the science experiments and

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hardware being delivered to the space

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station on the new cygnus cargo craft is

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a special camera meant to record meteor

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showers to help us learn more about the

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behavior and composition of asteroids

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and comments that cross paths with the

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earth

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it's called the meteor experiment and

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recently my colleague dan hewitt spoke

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with a payload developer michael

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hortonberry a principal engineer in the

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space science and engineering division

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at the southwest research institute

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at san antonio texas and asked him what

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prompted the development of this

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well meteor's a collaboration between

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southwest research institute and the

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chiba institute of technology in japan

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so our goal with this instrument is to

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use image analysis

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of meteors entering the earth's

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atmosphere to provide information on

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chemical and physical properties of the

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meteors like size density chemical

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composition

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so to do that for

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meteor showers that are well known and

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also

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during slow times to look for new meteor

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showers that possibly nobody's observed

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on here

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and there's something special about the

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camera you guys are going to be using

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what what can this camera capture that

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others can't necessarily

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well this camera it it's a pretty

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standard high-def high definition uh

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television camera

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that can capture normal video but in

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addition we have a customized lens that

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we can put diffraction gradings into

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and the diffraction gratings are are

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like tiny lines with tiny prisms that

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will take the light coming into the lens

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and split it into different wavelengths

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and then we can look at the different

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wavelengths of light coming in as the

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meteor enters the atmosphere and

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determine what the chemical composition

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of the meteor is

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and what the percentage of each chemical

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on the meteor is and we can right now we

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can do that with this lens for four

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different elements so where exactly is

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the camera going to be installed on the

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station and are the crew members on

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board going to have interaction with it

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how's it going to be operated

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well the camera gets installed in the uh

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it's called the wharf like the klingon

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security officer in the next generation

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of star trek

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uh it's the window observational

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research facility in the the us national

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lab

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uh and the wharf is an express rack with

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a window that looks down on the earth

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so

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the crew will be involved uh but mainly

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for doing the installation and then for

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helping us uh

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maintain the camera for doing things

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like changing out diffraction gratings

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and

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hard drives things like that so most of

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the time

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the crew will install the instrument

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and then it'll be operated from the

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ground

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uh primarily and then when we need

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something done to it the crew will help

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us out and they'll go in and swap out a

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diffraction grating or change out hard

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drive and then for your team this launch

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is going to be special because this has

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kind of been a long road for you guys

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this is going to be your third attempt

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to send meteor to the international

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space station what's it been like to

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kind of overcome these setbacks and get

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the hardware ready

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for the third time now

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it's been uh it's been a long road uh

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each you know we've had the a camera

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destroyed the two previous time two

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previous times this this third time's a

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charm for us

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uh you know when we had the first one

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destroyed we had a ground spare

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that we prepared for flight so that went

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pretty fast

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after the second one was destroyed the

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science team started looking at uh at

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the instrument and decided that we could

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actually since we had to have new camera

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and lens built anyway we could actually

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re-engineer some of the the lens

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assembly

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so we re-engineer some of the lens

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assembly to change the way the

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diffraction gratings are installed and

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make everything

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a little tighter tolerance and a little

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easier to adjust and make it easier for

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the crew to install so we're very

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hopeful that this third attempt is going

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to be successful all right well like you

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said i'm sure the third time will be the

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charm now for me you've already

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programmed you've already targeted a

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couple of big events what's going to be

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the first big event that you guys are

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looking forward to

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well the very first one that occurs

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right after we get on orbit is the the

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lyrids

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uh and then we get the awkwards after

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that and then the really big one which

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hopefully when we get installed at the

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end of april

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we'll

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do a little bit of check out over the

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first month or so and then we'll be

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really ready in august for the perseids

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which is the first big meteor shower and

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that's probably the one that most people

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are familiar with

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that and the leonids in november the

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really big ones that are really popular

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on the ground just because the number of

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meteors that enter the atmosphere and so

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after you guys get the video after it's

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all recorded how does it get back down

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here to the ground and what do you end

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up doing with that data you know what

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are we really looking to learn from this

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experiment

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yeah well like i said we're looking to

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learn you know more about meteors and

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more about their size their density

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their composition and what that'll tell

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us is

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uh

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more about the comets that most of the

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meteors came from so most of the meteor

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showers that that we're familiar with

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like the perseids and leonids are

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are

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all of those meteors came from a

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specific comet so if you know more about

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the meteors you know more about the

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comet that came from

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and so as far as getting the data back

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we have we have two ways to get the data

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back uh every day as as meteor

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looks down during the night passes from

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the station and takes data

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we

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will record data and the software on

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board will go through and look through

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that and try to find meteors

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and

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basically send us a list of times that

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it thinks it found meteors and little

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bitty short video clips

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to show what the meteors look like

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and then if we find some that are really

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interesting we can tell the software to

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download a larger

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higher resolution video of that but

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that's still only a fraction of the data

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so most of the data is stored on uh

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we've got 35 hard drives total so most

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of the data is stored on hard drives and

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that'll be sent back

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as we fill up a hard drive it'll be sent

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back down to the earth with a return

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vehicle and we'll look at it on the

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ground also

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all right well again michael fortenberry

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one of the primary team members for the

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meteor experiment and one of the

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principal engineers at the space science

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and engineering division at the

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southwest research institute in san

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antonio texas thanks so much for joining

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me today and again third time's a charm

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really looking forward to that launch

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and looking forward to getting some

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video and seeing some of those meteors