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BOURBON - NASA representatives visited Triton Jr./Sr. High School Friday to talk about their jobs and responsibilities with the agency.
Triton won the visit from the NASA officials after a team of Triton students took first place in a patch design contest.
According to Lori McClellan, THS teacher, Triton eighth-graders participated in an electronic field trip, "The Underwater World of Space," through Ball State University and NASA in October. More than 10 million students from more than 24 states participated in the program. As part of the program, there was a mission patch design contest with 81 patches submitted from across the country. Two teams, one being the team from Triton, won first place.
Members of the winning team include eighth-graders Ty Bradley, Maria Espinosa, Josh Foust, Erica Finchum and Ashley Ballinger and ninth-grader Zack Bradley. They found out they won in November, but it took a few months to set up the time and date for the program.
Speakers for the program Friday included Mark Kornmann, Ball State University coordinator for the program; Grant Murray, dive specialist for Neutral Buoyancy Lab with Space Center Houston; Amy Ross, spacesuit engineer with NASA; and Elisca Hicks, education program specialist with Space Center Houston.
In a pre-visit interview and during the program, Murray said NASA has the biggest pool in the world to help train astronauts for their space walks. It is the only environment on earth where NASA can create weightlessness. Before an astronaut goes on an actual flight, he said they will train in the pool for one to two years.
The pool is approximately 40,000 square feet and 40 feet deep. During training, five astronauts at a time can be in the pool.
Murray said 99 percent of people don't get to see in a lifetime the equipment, photos and information presented to the students Friday.
Whether he's speaking to students, Scouts or visitors at the Space Center in Houston, Murray said the audience is always captivated. People are still interested in space and space exploration and NASA "wants to try to increase that as much as possible."
And there's still more to learn from space, he said.
"The more we do, the more we go (into space), the more there is to learn," he said.
Ross said she primarily works on the development and designing of advanced space suits for planetary exploration. They can't simulate all the planetary conditions in one place, so they test the suit in thermal chambers, in deserts and wherever else they must to test the new suit designs.
She said they have to test the different aspects of the 300-pound suits to see if they will protect the astronauts from the heat, cold, micrometeorite environment, radiation and vacuum of space. Micrometeorites hit astronauts at speeds of 17,500 mph hour while the astronaut is also traveling at 17,500 mph, making for a combined impact speed of 35,000 mph. When an astronaut is orbiting earth, temperatures range from 300 degrees Fahrenheit on the sunny side of the earth to 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit on the dark side of the earth.
The five-layer suits also are designed based on where the astronauts are going and what they will be doing once they get there.
Before a mission, an astronaut will train in the suits for six to nine months and have three spacesuit runs. The spacesuit Ross showed at Triton Friday is a extravehicular mobility unit.
Each of the visiting NASA representatives, Kornmann and Triton school were presented by the students with replicas of the patches the Triton students designed.
