Today we got a tour of Goddard Space Flight Center. We got to see inside the clean room where they had one of the full-sized mockups of the Hubble Telescope and the satellite that is going to fly past Pluto (to be launched in 2006). The focus of the tour was on robotics and the Hubble Telescope. There were lots of mockups of the Hubble Telescope laying around that they used for the Hubble servicing missions. We got to hear from some of the people who designed the robot to service the Hubble, and saw some parts of the actual robot. We also got to see lots of the environmental testing equipment including a large centrifuge that can give ~30 Gs. There was a really big vacuum chamber that can heat up to 250 F and cool down to -250 F, and can bombard the object with all kinds of particles. It was a pretty neat field trip.
this is a test
with a line break