Similar to our first day on the island, our team woke up before the sun to get our visitors' badges for NASA Wallops Flight Facility. Each day that we enter the base, we need to present these badges and a valid photo ID to gain entry to Wallops.
After getting our badges and eating breakfast at the Wallops Cafeteria, we attended a brief safety seminar in the F-7 building and then waited to be called upon by Audrey for integration of the canisters. Integration occurred in the F-10 building, where the NASA engineers did visual inspections and a weight check of our total payload.
Each of the nine teams went through this same process and, once each payload was checked, the spin and vibe tests began. The spin test rotated the rocket to check the center of mass. If the rocket wobbled off balance in any direction, then the spin machine can tell the engineers how much ballast to add to a specific axis (x, y, or z). The vibe test exposed the rocket and its canisters to vibrations along the x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis. This is done in order to simulate the conditions of the launch and ensure that the payloads can withstand the flight conditions (forces up to 25g).
Unfortunately, these tests ran behind schedule and all the teams were in F-10 until 8:00pm! However, the extra time allowed us to connect with other teams and learn about their experiments. We were all able to network and make friends with the other institutions, like Langston University, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and West Virginia University, because of this delay. See the pictures below of all of us together!
First picture (from left to right): Rodaind Yeremuh (Langston University), Dashari Miller (Langston University), Shreeya Desai (HWS)
Second picture (from left to right): Jack Hymowitz (SIT), Dr. Ileana Dumitriu (HWS)
Third picture (from left to right): Shreeya Desai (HWS), James Truley (HWS), William Elliman (HWS), Jasper White (HWS), Victoria Loshusan (HWS), Jon Pulley (West Virginia University), Nate Musser (West Virginia University)
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