"An Experience I'll Never Forget": 

Devon Couch at Space Camp

Space Camp was an experience I'll never forget. From the moment myself and Ben Mannisto arrived in Huntsville, Alabama it was nothing short of amazing. The week was filled with interesting classes, fun activities, and lots of opportunities to get to know people from all around the world.

There were about 100 people attending space camp that week, and they were split into five teams. My team was Acidalia, named after a plain on Mars. On my team there were people from Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Greece, Mexico, Colombia, Belgium, the United Kingdom and all of the United States.

There were a variety of classes throughout the week, all of them very interesting. There were classes about the history of space flight, space exploration systems, and even about non-­governmental space programs.

There was also a handful of engineering challenged, my favourite being the rocket building one. We were given the task of building a homemade rocket with limited time and resources. Doesn't seem to hard at first, you are provided with the right material to create a basic rocket. The only catch, your rocket had to house an egg, and this egg had to survive the launch, flight, and landing of your rocket. After about 400 drawings and a 20 minute debate on what we should name our team, (we went with CANZSA+1, the Canadian Australian New Zealand Space Agency Plus One) we started actually building our rocket. At this point we had wasted half of the time we had to construct our rocket, and this only got worse when after 10 minutes of building

The infamous rocket

(the only thing we managed to do in those 10 minutes was realize our plan wasn't going to work) someone came up with the idea of having a logo, and another 20 minutes went down the drain.

Somehow we managed to finish our rocket. Then came launch day. The launch may not have been pretty, but it worked. The landing on the other hand, let's just say our parachute may not have worked perfectly. It doesn't matter how many cotton balls you have protecting an egg, when it comes crashing into the ground with no parachute, it doesn't survive.

You also got to choose between pilot training and mission specialist training. I chose to do the pilot training, and it was an amazing time. We learned about the principals of flight, and some basic survival tips. We got to experience 3.2 g’s in the centrifuge, which is basically a giant arm that spins a 2 person capsule that's on the end of it. We then got to go into the F­-18 simulators, were we spent some time learning how all the controls worked. Once we mastered taking off, landing and maneuvering in the air, we were able to spend a few hours simulating air­-to­-air combat.

Probably the most exciting part of Space Camp was the simulated missions. There were three of them in total, 2 that were 1 hour space shuttle missions. During these missions there were 3 groups you could be in,the ISS (International Space Station) where space science was being done, aboard the space shuttle, or in MOCR (Mission Operations Control Room). During our first mission I was in MOCR acting as the GNC, the Guidance, Navigation and Control Systems Engineer. My job was to make sure the shuttle changed direction when it needed to and didn't drift off course. Our mission went well, as good as it could go since instead of closing the large payload bay doors on the shuttle, when the commander was asked to close the doors, he went down the ladder and shut the hatch that lead to the payload bay. For our second mission I was the Pilot in the space shuttle. There was one thing we knew going into this mission. One of the 2 missions always has an abort, and since the last one didn't, it was a matter of what kind it would be. There are 4 types of aborts, RTLS (Return to Launch Site), TAL (Transoceanic Abort Landing), AOA (Abort Once Around), and ATO (Abort to Orbit). There were 2 we knew we wouldn't do, RTLS and ATO. This was because a RTLS had never been successfully completed in the simulator and no matter how over confident me and the Commander were they wouldn't let us do it. Also it results in a very short mission since you abort shortly after lift off. An ATO requires another shuttle to come retrieve the crew so we knew we wouldn't do that either. We ended up doing an AOA, and even after a poor approach I managed to perfectly land the shuttle. This may have had something to do with the training, but it was probably because we had "Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty playing in the background.

Recieving wings from astronaut
Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger

Our last mission was the EDM or Extended Duration Mission. This was a 3 hour simulated Mars mission. There were again 3 groups to be in, Mission Control, the Orion capsule heading to Mars, or in the Ouranos base on Mars’s largest moon Phobos. I was the pilot of the Orion capsule during this mission. This mission was tons of fun. It was made especially fun because of the many, mainly mental, medical anomalies. This most memorable of these was after we arrived on Mars, and our Commander decided that Mission Control was stressing everyone out. He decided to turn of all the mics and speakers for communication and lead the entire Orion crew through a yoga class.

All in all Space Camp was something I could never forget. The incredible time I had and the friends I made from all around the world made this a truly unique and exciting experience.