posted 05-11-2017 09:51 AM               

The orbiter, Intrepid, which is housed in a trailer, contains a working flight deck that is amazing, as well as living quarters in the mid deck. The mission lasts for about 28 hours and the crew sleeps in the mid deck bunks at night.

One of the most exciting events is the "walk out" as the crew walks through the entire elementary school to the delight of the younger kids who cheer, wave flags, and exchange high fives with them. It's a very exciting day for all, and the culmination of eight months of "training" for the crew.

This year they had a major incident during the landing phase (think "Russell, we've had a problem"). Here's what happened as posted on their Facebook page by Chris Laster, the teacher who developed and runs the program:

I just received an email from a reporter who asked a simple question: "Was your landing successful?"

Here is my response (It is long.):

Our landing was successful. It was also the wildest ride I've ever been on in all of our simulations.

We were at the point in the mission in which the Intrepid had already deorbited and reentered the Earth's atmosphere — past the point of no return. It was on its glide toward a landing and only about 3 minutes from the final approach phase and just 6 minutes from wheels on the ground. Things were going smoothly when... BAM!!! ...the power gets knocked out in Mission Control for about 2 seconds, long enough to shut down everything — the computers at the flight control consoles, our sound system, the live YouTube feed computer... EVERYTHING!

The students immediately swung into recovery mode, restarting their computers and getting ready to read their backup files to restore their data and continue. Then the astronaut crew comes on the air-ground comm loop. "Russell, we've had a power surge or something and briefly lost power. All of our equipment shut down." It was not limited to just Mission Control!

The team went into action to restart the equipment on the Intrepid simulator. Within about 3 minutes, everything was fully operational and the Mission Control Team and Astronaut Crew worked together to bring the Intrepid home safely with a perfect landing.

We are used to small glitches like a computer freezing up and having to be restarted or a loose connection somewhere interfering with radio communication. We had never had anything on this scale, not even close, and the timing could not have been worse. Parents were gasping and groaning, but the kids stayed perfectly calm. They chose to tackle the problem.