Day 03

Today we awoke just like any other day before to sunny skies and personally we all thought todays weather was the best yet (no humidity)! After breakfast we boarded our coaches and headed straight to the Johnson space centre in our assigned classrooms. Both groups attended a talk given by Elizabeth Blome a nasa employee, a woman with many experiences of different jobs and of many talents. We had a mini q&a session with her which was incredibly insightful! After that we split off again into our groups and expedition discovery (group A) tested out their thermal and cryogenic shields for their “egg”stronauts and “marsh”stronauts whilst expedition endeavor (group B) set off on a new challenge in our classroom : building and programming mars rovers. After a brief introduction of the existing rovers, we were set the task to construct our own rover. Our robot had to be able to pick up and identify various samples including vesicular basalt and arenite sandstone. Each team were split into a coding team and a mechanical team. Both tasks were equally stressful and challenging. However both were very enjoyable and we even named our bots (special mention to rovers Steven and Ronald). We had a working lunch and continued on our projects whilst group A went scuba diving (how fun). Whilst some rovers came close to competing the end goal of lifting samples, no group managed to succeed in that task. However the teachers managed to demonstrate a very well-built pulley system (that lasted a reasonable period of time before disaster hit). Coding only went slightly better due to the many system failures in the building competition, with some groups even managing to complete the final task semi-successfully. Of course the computing teachers had a perfect code. We expected no less of them. After an eventful day, both groups reunited at Kemah Boardwalk where we first enjoyed a delicious meal at Bubba Gump, a Forrest Gump themed restaurant. Finally, we split off into groups and enjoyed a night of fun and camaraderie riding on the various rollercoasters and attractions by the sea. Even as the sky went dark, we screamed away into the night- especially on the Boardwalk Bullet.