here i'm working on one of the glove box
experiments called the fsgc fiber
supported droplet combustion
this is one of the numerous glove box
experiments that comes out of the nasa
lewis research center up in beautiful
cleveland ohio and over half of the
experiments and principal investigators
scientists working uh to put this
mission together have come from the nasa
lewis research center and we'd like to
acknowledge their efforts today as we
perform one of their combustion
experiments
in this one we're supporting a
little small drop of fuel about a
millimeter so in size half an inch
across on a small fiber and
igniting it and watching the different
burning characteristics
this is yet another combustion
experiment this one is a droplet
combustion experiment the goal here is
to understand the droplet burning
process
and so to do that we ignite single
heptane fuel droplets in an oxidizing
mixture we want to understand combustion
so we can make
more efficient combustion using devices
we had several good burns today we had
problem with one burn because uh the
droplet didn't deploy properly but it's
a very complicated process that requires
a lot of elegance in timing and so it's
not surprising that we only had three
out of four good burns today
okay we have some internet questions
we'd like to answer the first one is
from young eight-year-old lindsay
o'brien from new hampshire
and lindsay asks have you have you or
any members of your crew ever consider
bringing bats on board she's curious to
find out which way bats would hang when
they are at rest
well lindsay i'm not sure any of us have
considered taking baths with this on boy
but i think that uh it's important to
note that while we're in space there is
no such thing as the ceiling or the
floor or the wall
everything can become whichever one you
want them to for instance if i was to
stand on what you would think of as a
ceiling for a long time pretty soon that
would become the floor to me so bats
could pretty much hang wherever they
wanted to
have an internet question from an art
little field from melbourne florida not
far from uh pad 39a at the kennedy space
center where we took off just a few days
ago
and art asks the question uh who is
responsible for thinking of and planning
the experiments which we conduct on the
mission
all right as you can imagine it's no one
person this is a team of thousands of
thousands of people not only across the
great country of america but around the
world we have an international payload
here with experiments from japan germany
the rest of europe and all across the
united states and we're represented by
many universities and technical fields
all across america
the the research is conducted by these
different organizations and the planning
goes on at the marshall space flight
center in alabama as you can imagine
planning for a mission this complicated
takes quite a long time and those folks
that were working on this mission long
before we were ever assigned to it
so we'd like to acknowledge their great
efforts they've been working on this
mission many many years getting it
prepared and selecting the experiments
and getting them packed on board for us
to fly this over the 16 day flight
next question is from
linda owens
of miami florida
and she asks
how dangerous are your combustion
experiments considering they are taking
place within the shuttle
and the answer to the question is that
fire of course has to be dealt with very
carefully under any circumstance
especially aboard an orbiting spacecraft
because of that
the scientists and the engineers who
designed the experiments were very very
careful
to make sure that the experiments are
very safe and have many levels of
containment so that it would be very
highly improbable that the fire could
get out of the combustion chambers that
they're contained in so it's really a
tribute to the engineers and scientists
at nasa and other organizations that the
experiments are so safe
thanks ed for letting me do the extra
drops that was fun
copying was fun to see on the ground
yeah go ahead allen i'm just looking at
the decal trying to figure out what the
next test point is here
copy that the next test point is 10 20
20 charlie and because of that since
it's not in sequence you will need to
hit new test point not next test point
this time
stabilization time 12 minutes
great thanks that's what i was trying to
figure out
okay that's complete
i want to check that the cell range
pop-up screen appeared
i have that
and we'd like you to enter six zero
decimal zero
and that's complete and you can enter
okay
hey we were successful uh again with
mike full uh once again however it's
only about a 30 or 45 second contact i
could hear him for much longer than that
but he could not hear me
i also heard him trying to make contact
with houston i couldn't tell if he was
successful or not in doing that w5r was
who he's trying to call
what was neat about the same time i was
talking uh susan had the binoculars out
the window while watching the
mirror come up above the right wing just
like you said it would it was just
spectacular
great how's mike doing
it was just a short period of time where
we were actually both talking to each
other the other period of time i was
able to hear him but he couldn't hear me
he transmitted in the blind best wishes
to me and the crew for a successful
flight and uh successful
landing and uh of course i uh i passed
on the same to him but i'm not sure if
he was able to hear me but uh appreciate
y'all setting it up it was it was a lot
of fun
mark i think
watching this with the crew aboard a
space shuttle orbiting the earth is a
great
example of how robots and humans can
work together with uh
with the pathfinder
leading the way for humans to uh to come
in its footsteps uh sometime in the
hopefully near future
well mike we share those sentiments and
it's certainly an auspicious uh
beginning for the return to mars
so far everything looks like it's going
just uh perfectly and we also have seen
pictures of
full of scientists at jpl who are
absolutely ecstatic
you