NASA Social and Crew 9 Launch.

Luck is when opportunity knocks and you answer. I was doing my daily job of checking news feeds when I came across a post, "Apply for a NASA social media credential." I had heard from the lovely Tim Gagnon about these events where influencers were invited to participate in launches at KSE. Should I? Could I apply? I'm certainly no influencer, but the podcast has a growing audience that I'm sure would love to know more about this, right? In July I put my name forward and a little notification in my inbox let me know that I'd been invited to the crew 9 social media event. Today is August the 2nd, 2024. I'm Alice Karuth and this is a T-minor special edition. Originally set for an August launch with a four-person crew, the NASA and SpaceX crew 9 mission had been dogged with drama thanks to the decision to return Boeing's Starliner uncrewed in September. NASA made the call on August the 24th to keep Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore on the ISS and return the Starliner capsule to Earth without them. They would become part of the Expedition 72 mission and the crew 9 team would be reduced to two, leaving two extra seats and taking two additional flight suits for the two astronauts in orbit. Okay, so now you have the context. You can understand why there was a delay to the original flight date which was set for August the 18th. I couldn't make that date due to family commitments anyway so I felt fortunate and maybe a little lucky that things got postponed until September. The invite clearly stated that the dates were subject to change and change they did, twice before I put my flights and then again thanks to Hurricane Helen a third time. That last change was a late call. I left New Mexico Tuesday morning monitoring the weather reports throughout the journey. They had Hurricane Helen reaching the Cape a little after the planned launch time and believing that at this late point maybe they would go ahead with the event anyway. I still felt pretty certain when no changes were announced on arrival in Houston and checked again as I landed in Orlando. It wasn't until one hour later as I pulled up to my hotel in Titersville that I was hit with the news that the weather was too unpredictable and the launch had been pushed to Saturday with the social events starting on Friday. "What is a NASA social event?" I hear you ask. I can't say that I really knew ahead of time. Very little details were shared about what we were doing. The email stated that during the event we would get the opportunity to tour NASA facilities at Kennedy, meet and interact with subject matter experts, meet fellow social media influencers and space enthusiasts, meet members of NASA's social media team and potentially view the launch of NASA's SpaceX Crew 9. As someone who hadn't seen an orbital human spaceflight before, all this sounded great. But why doesn't NASA do this? Here's Matina, our wonderful host to explain in further detail. My name is Matina Duzanis. I am a public affairs officer at Kennedy covering the diversity and safety and mission assurance speeds and then part-time I lend myself to helping out with our social team. We are trying to reach all of your diverse audiences so that we can get the NASA story out. Originally, I believe before my time started as a tweet up and throughout social media's evolution, it's now called NASA social. It's a group of digital content creators that we invite to get behind the scenes tours here at Kennedy Space Center. They get the opportunity to chat with our subject matter experts. They get to ask questions. We have a NASA social panel that they also get to be part of the Q&A. Then of course, they get to build these lifelong friendships with other folks that are either interested in space or this is the first time that they're dipping their toes in it or folks that are returning as NASA social alumni. This isn't their first launch or their first NASA social. We've seen folks that have gotten job opportunities after the NASA social or they've gotten internship opportunities. It's a great networking opportunity but again, a great way to continue telling the NASA story. So I landed in the Sunshine State with two days to kill time before my event. I spent the first night catching up with friends that moved from New Mexico to Florida over the last few years to work for big name companies like Boeing and Relativity. They both love where they are but miss the excellent food in the mountains in the high desert. On day two I worked from the exceptional lobby of my hotel adorned with space decoration which included an astronaut statue, a replica of Lockheed Martin's Atlas V and a robot that roamed around, although I'm yet to figure out the purpose it served. That afternoon I saw on the Space Hipsters page on Facebook that a group was planning to meet at Zarellas to include another stranded social attendee so I hopped in an Uber and headed to Astronaut Boulevard. The restaurant is an astronaut hangout. Photos of visiting astronauts and signed memorabilia covered the wall. I met Jean Wright, a former seamstress at NASA along with her photographer and docent colleagues and Steve Jones, an educator from Georgia that you'll be hearing from later. As it turned out Steve was not only part of the NASA social event but also staying at my hotel and offered to be my ride. His 69 Mustang, born of the year that man went to the moon, blew like the colour of the TARDIS and named after his favourite Huvvian sidekick Sarah Jane was a hit with all the soja and a sweet ride for my adventures. On Thursday I worked to a beautiful sunrise at the hotel and waited for Hurricane Helen to make her presence known. I'd stocked up on snacks and planned to spend the day hunkered down at the hotel to avoid the wind and rain. Helen caused utter devastation to parts of Florida and to states further north but only skirted with the Cape region downing a few power lines in her wake. The launch and social events were still on. More of that lady luck shining down on me. Okay it's Friday September the 27th. It's day one of the NASA social event and I've just spent the last 24 hours hiding out from Hurricane Helen in my hotel room in Titusville. I woke up to a very dark and gloomy space outside. Luckily the hurricane didn't cause too much damage in the area though it did down a lot of power to a lot of homes and residents so I'm not sure whether or not we're going to get a lot today. In fact I have no idea what the itinerary is. It's changed so many times since I first signed up for this NASA social event that it could be absolutely anything that we can expect today and it could even be a cancellation of the launch itself. So I'm prepared for the unexpected and just hope for the best. I'm really really hoping we get to see the vehicle assembly building. I'm really hoping we get to see a few behind the scenes areas of the NASA Kennedy Space Centre but I'm tempering my expectations and hoping for the best. As it turns out day one was a trip of nostalgia. We started off at the shuttle landing facility viewing the NASA helicopters and starfighter jets. We then got to visit the runway and the mark of the last shuttle landing site. The runway was enormous 15,000 and one feet long and 300 feet wide surrounded by the wildlife reserve. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a visit by a gator. It wasn't until we were back on the tour bus that we were informed why the hangar had been so familiar to so many of us. My name is Greg Hale. I have been working out here for about 28 years and now I come out here as a docent and I bring people out to tell them the story of what happened with NASA during the shuttle program and now on to the Artemis program. We went and saw a hangar yesterday at the shuttle facility and you told us a story afterwards. Are you able to tell us what that hangar was used for? Oh, that hangar was used for when we had the STS-107 accident. That's where they did the crash investigation. They put a grid square out there and they put all the pieces and parts in it where it would have been if it was in a whole ship and everything. It's just like the aircraft crashes. You put it together and decide, figure out what caused the accident to go bad in the first place and that was the hangar that we used it in. With that news hanging over us, we made our way to the cafeteria in the shadow of the vehicle assembly building to grab a quick bite. I was so looking forward to visiting the VAB but unfortunately Artemis parts are being assembled inside so it's closed for guests but man, it was amazing to see that iconic building in the flesh. We also got to take our pictures at the countdown clock. The image still showed the Crew 9 logo without a timer. At this point we were told it was only a 55% chance of launch due to inclement weather. Our group remained positive that we would see it go. Post lunch we headed to the news centre to see a live panel on the ISS held by NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free, Robin Gattens, Director of NASA's ISS Program and Acting Director of NASA's Commercial Space Flight Division, Jennifer Buckley, Chief Scientist at NASA's ISS Program and John Posey, Dragon Engineer at NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The purpose of the panel was to discuss why the ISS is important for scientific research and for the future of humanity. But it also gave me an opportunity to ask about the future of the Commercial Leo Destination Program that's been in the media so much recently. Robin Gattens obliged me with a response. Hi Alice Carrou from Team Miners, you've talked a few times about the Commercial Leo Destination project that's coming after the ISS. Obviously there's been reports recently that one of your commercial partners is quite behind. Russia hasn't committed beyond 2028 to be able to commit to the ISS. What are the contingency plans for NASA if something goes wrong and you aren't able to get something ready in time for you to do orbit? Yeah so we're working really hard with our commercial partners to get a commercial space station by the end of the decade. And so I think our schedules even though everything takes longer and we're seeing that certainly with some of these companies because when you're developing something new it generally takes longer. All of our vehicles have taken longer than scheduled. But I think we are still on a path to getting that capability by the end of the decade and we're committed to doing that so that we can have a transition with no gap. That's the last thing we want is to break this 23 by then 28-29 year streak of continuous presence by not having a place to go. So we're working really hard on that and our commercial partners are doing well. They're making progress. We've got a lot of interested companies out there and that's exciting to see. And we're going to be, stay tuned because we're going to be, we just released our Leo microgravity strategy which outlines our goals and objectives for our future plans in low Earth orbit. And we're excited about that. We're excited about issuing our request for proposals next year and making some awards for the next phase of that development. One thing that I hadn't quite understood ahead of my visit was just how vast the Cape was and how it housed two separate launch facilities. The Cape is 17 miles long and six miles wide and has both the NASA facility and the original Air Force, now Space Force, base next door. After the panel, our tour took us to Complex 26 on the Space Force side to see the launch site of Explorer 1, America's first satellite. There we met James Draper, director of the museum that now occupies the site and shares the story of the early launches from the area. We even got to meet the museum mascot Rupert the Armadillo, which I was told was named after the many occupants in the area. Both Kennedy Space Center and the Space Force Complex are on a national wildlife refuge, but so far I haven't seen more than a few herons. We closed out the day with the most exciting part of the tour. We headed to launch Complex 40 and saw the Falcon 9 on the pad and the Crew Dragon Capture on board. By this time the weather was glorious, sunny, a little cloudy and a soft breeze, we were even more hopeful that the launch was going to happen. We'll be right back. Welcome back. It's Saturday, September 28th. I had an incredible day one at the NASA social event. I've woken up to a completely different experience. The sun is shining, the sky is clear, and as much as yesterday they said there was only going to be a 55% chance of launch. I would say it's looking like it's much more likely. Yesterday everything went to plan. We had a really great panel session. We saw the rocket on the launch pad ready to go. They were attaching the crew arm yesterday as we were leaving the launch pad area, so I'm really hopeful that today we will see a flight. I'm really excited to bring you everything that happens again on day two. I spent day one soaking it all in, chatting to my fellow attendees and trying to scope out how I was going to tell this story. It's really through the eyes of the participants that we figure out what this is all about. I mentioned Steve and his Mustang earlier. My name is Steve Jones and I am an educator at Innovation Academy in Fulton County Schools in Georgia. I teach astronomy and scientific research and I love everything about space. So I've applied several times for NASA social. I'm just, you know, anything that I can do to find out about what NASA is doing and then get that information back to my students. I love it. So I've applied several times and finally got accepted. So, and this being a crewed launch, it was very exciting to come to this one. I really wanted to see a lot of the, behind the scenes stuff that you don't see on a normal tour that I could bring to my students to help them see what it is that NASA does, what the various companies that work with NASA do. Again, I'm trying to encourage my students to take up careers in the space industry. So if I have first hand knowledge of that information, I can take that to the students. And what have you found has been the highlight so far of the whole tour? I really enjoyed seeing the shuttle landing facility yesterday and getting out to that runway. It's a marvel of engineering that they have put down out there and I love being able to see where the shuttle, the last shuttle had landed and seeing all of that. I took a lot of pictures while we were in the hangar of the various, the Starfighter F-104s that were in there. I want to show them, you know, the different types of aircraft that were in there. I want to go to my students who are in the health sciences and talk to them about what we learned in the ISS 101 press conference yesterday about, you know, it's not just astronauts and engineers. There's all sorts of different careers with NASA. There's all sorts of ways to be involved. So that's really what I want to take to them and kind of share. If I can share my passion and excitement for what I've done and be able to reach at least one student, then I've done well. We'd spent the morning of day two over at the crew walkout area. Media were allowed right in front of the doors that opened to see the crew jump into their waiting Teslas. Us social media folk waited across the street. We were hiding from the morning sun when a familiar face walked towards us. Administrator Bill Nelson came to say hello and was quickly followed by Associate Administrator Pam Melroy. Not a bad start to the day to spot two former shuttle astronauts. Nick Hague and Alexander Gorbanov came out of the crew quarters in their SpaceX flight suits, paused to say goodbye to their families and to head it off to the pad. We were then corralled into the bus and taken back to the media centre to wait to see if the launch would still proceed. Yes, even at this point the weather wasn't looking good for the launch time at 117pm. Clouds had rolled in and there was thunder in the area. I'd assumed that there would be a small window of launch opportunity but hadn't taken into account that for ISS docking it was the set time of 117pm lift off or not at all. The time at the media centre allowed me the opportunity to speak to the other NASA social participants. Outreach really seemed to be a strong reason many attended the social event. My name is Chris Rochna, I'm 24K on the socials and I'm from Las Vegas. I'm trying to help cover the STEM part of NASA and get more people involved in STEM. What has been the most rewarding part of the NASA social for you? It's really the people. Getting to meet everybody, talk with you, talk with everyone from around the world that's here, also excited about space and technology. That's what I'm most excited for for sure. Joan had a particularly interesting story. As a children's author she had released a series of books to engage middle and high school students in space careers. My name is Joan Marie Galat, Galat rhymes with dot and I wrote the dot to dot in the sky series. So tell me what made you apply for the NASA social event? When I heard about the NASA social event I could not resist. To be around people who share my passion for space and space exploration and the night sky is just a wonderful experience. I live just outside Edmonton which is Alberta's capital city in Alberta, Canada. It was about eight hours flying to get here. Had to change planes in Ottawa so yeah a bit of a commitment. What were your expectations coming into this event? I was expecting to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes and I've been very satisfied with that. I have learned more about what goes on behind the scenes. There's so many people employed by NASA who are not astronauts. I mean there's just what an incredible support system. You go past building, past building, past building and there's all these people supporting the space program and I love that. I think it's, I write books for children and I want kids to know that there's more than one job in the space industry. If you're passionate about building things you could be an engineer. If you're passionate about sewing you could create spacecraft, spacesuits, different things and a food scientist like to prepare all the food that goes up into space. There's just so many ways to be involved. It's exciting. It was soon after this last chat was recorded that we were informed that things were looking good for launch. We were up to 70 per cent for go. We were also told that we wouldn't be watching the launch from the wharf in front of the VAB. Instead we were heading back to the Space Force area to a viewing spot just over two miles away from Launch Pad 40 across the water to watch it lift off. The clouds were thick and vast at this point but as we were standing near the Space Force's weather team we were informed that an opening was expected at the time of the launch window. There's a lot that could cause a scrub at this point and after all the delays I tempered my expectations but as luck would have it I spotted my first real wildlife. In the water in front of the media were at least three large alligators. Another lucky sign maybe. Things were looking very positive for a launch. We watched the venting of the spacecraft in the crew walkway pull away from the rocket. 1.17pm grew closer and the media area drew quiet and then this. That commentary was courtesy of the angry astronaut, another member of the social group. Wow. That was all I could say. The launch was unbelievably smooth and the sound delayed by a few seconds hit me square in the chest after ricocheting off the water. We all stood stunned as the Falcon 9 flew up into that opening in the clouds and out of view. It was several minutes before the booster was spotted as it glided back to land at the Cape but not before it broke the sound barrier. It is straight above us here it comes coming back down. We got it. We got it. Here it is. Booster's on its way back. We just saw a flare. There it is. Just saw a flare briefly. It's on its way back. I'm trying to spot it. There it is. Oh my god. There it goes. There it goes. Holy god. There it goes. I hope you guys can see this. It's amazing. There it goes. It's flaring now. Flaring now and starting to land. More commentary from the angry astronaut and another vibration felt through my entire body. I honestly think the re-entry was more thrilling. I hadn't realised how graceful the booster looked coming into land, even if it didn't sound it. And as quick as it had taken off, it was quickly over. The social media team were herded back to the bus and taken back to our starting point to go our separate ways. I started a WhatsApp group to share our images and stories and most importantly as a method to stay in touch. I want to thank the incredible photographers in the group for sharing their images so I could focus on capturing audio. You have astounded me with your talents. I have shared a few on the Team Miners Instagram page so go and check them out. And to add to the drama, the heavens opened and it rained on and off for the rest of the afternoon. It really was a miracle that the launch took off without a weather delay. Thank you to Matina and Greg for being our guides for the two days on site and to Vicky and Tim for driving the bus. Thank you to Steve for his rides in the Stang. Go check out his images of the classic car in front of the VAB at Steve Stang 1969 on Instagram. And thank you to Lady Luck for keeping us all safe and letting the launch go off normally. At least until the upper stages, but that's a whole other story. I made it back to New Mexico in time to watch the crew dock with the ISS. It was the moment I saw Nick Hague and Alexander Gorbanov exit the hatch that the emotion of the in-hole event really hit me. I wish them and the rest of Expedition 72 Godspeed and I thank them all for their service to humanity. That's it for Team Miners for October 2nd, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us at space@n2k.com or submit the survey in the show notes. Your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. N2K Strategic Workforce Intelligence optimizes the value of your biggest investment, your people. We make you smarter about your team while making your team smarter. This episode was produced and narrated by me, Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Kauff. Simone Petrella is our president and Peter Kilpie is our publisher. Thanks for listening and stay lucky. . [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]