Our launch has been scheduled for February 21, 2022 at 5:30 am
Training has begun converging on the “paydirt”. The three responses required are: Warn, Group, Work
The whole crew is in the station. We are challenged with full-blown emergency situations.The responses must be immediate, teamwork while operating the communication inside the station and with ground control, all according to the procedures. An “emergency” sometimes means entering Dragon, shutting the hatches and simulating a return to Earth. Each crew has its vehicle “parked” and waiting to return it to Earth.
All these are preparations for the tests each one of us will be undergoing separately and all of us together as a crew.
In a meeting with Reed Weissman, NASA’s manager of astronauts office, we went over the working procedures and cooperation procedures between the private team and the NASA teams. We have received an important update:
Our launch has been scheduled for February 21, 2022 at 5:30 am
On Thursday we met all of the Axiom employees, an ice cream truck was brought into the garden, and there we met wave after wave of Company teams - Development, Engineering, Marketing, Finance, Cyber, Design etc. etc., approximately 300 people in total. Most of them are working on building Axiom’s own private Space Station, which is going to replace the current one.
I knew about our upcoming trip to the - NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, but I had underestimated its importance and the importance of meeting the teams at the Scientific Payloads Center (as opposed to “cargo”, which deals with consumable cargoes such as food, fuel, etc.) The Center personnel are in charge of the astronauts’ work at the Station every hour of the day. The control center is manned by a group of operators. They study and learn all of the experiments from top to bottom, and only they are allowed to converse with the astronauts.
The Center’s engineers break down each experiment into its components and build a detailed work plan for every scenario. They build the detailed work plans six weeks ahead together with brilliant teams of experts. In addition they integrate the work plans of everybody that is at the Station, they make sure the Station’s resources are regulated and most importantly - are able to make changes. All of the Station-Earth communication is exposed to the outside world. I offered to take something for them to space. They were very touched by this gesture and asked me to take their group’s emblem with me. Turns out nobody has ever offered this to them in the past.
The control center in Huntsville serves as a backup for the Houston MCC. We ought to learn from it what we can present for ourselves. NASA releases a great deal of material, including 6 video channels from the Station, referred to as the “six-pack”.
We concluded our visit by climbing up the Missile Inspection Tower, where they are now working on the SLS, that powerful rocket intended to launch humans to Mars. We also visited a quality of life systems development center - particularly water treatment.
The center’s manager, Judy Singer, came to greet us and offered us any possible support. I expect there is going to be an awful lot of work of our scientific team directly with Huntsville, including in real-time.
Yours, Eytan
