SSEP Blog – Ballston Spa, NY

There were no phone calls recieved from ITA after we dropped off the samples so we are assuming that no news is good news and that the loading of the samples went well.  We did find it quite amusing that when we went out to dinner last night the special of the day was of all things – you guessed it, “Tilapia”.  We all just started laughing.  However, we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to order the special considering there were approximately 800 of its “siblings” sitting up in boxes in the hotel room.

Here is a photo of the samples in the lab this afternoon. They are in the box on the left of the table. They will be moved from this lab to another more high tech lab this afternoon to be loaded into the MDA. Loading starts at 3:47 pm and goes through the next 24 hours.

Science Coordinator Diane Irwin sent a note that they have just handed off the samples at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s Center.

3 days to go…………

The 5th grade team loaded the control unit at the school this morning. They received a final shipment of eggs from AmeriCulture and went right to work preparing samples for the MDA control unit.

We are wondering if all the running through the airport yesterday may have helped with the aeration of the water in the vials.  Even so, we opened the vials last night to try to get more oxygen into the water.  We also shook them last night and this morning.  If the shipped samples of water arrive we will try to mix them some more to continue to try to get as much oxygen in the water as possible.

We are now waiting for the eggs to be delivered so that they can be combined with the water and delivered to Kennedy Space Center.  We know that the FedEx shipment arrived at the Orlando Airport at 7:21.  UPS has not yet updated the status.  The shipment from Southwest is landing in Miami at 8:05 and will then board a plane to Orlando for an 11:00 arrival.

We were almost an hour late taking off from Albany.  We had 10 minutes from the time we landed to the time our plane was supposed to depart to make it from terminal C50 to B12.  We decided to run and try to make the flight.  Got to the terminal 5 minutes after the plane was supposed to depart and found a line of people still waiting to board.  The departure time had been delayed by 20 minutes.  Things seemed to be working in our favor.

We were able to bring the six vials of water samples through airport security (weren’t sure with all of the limitations on liquids if this was going to be possible). 

Waiting to board the plane.

They developed and grew over vacation!

We got back from vacation today and had an awesome discovery.  The eggs that we had put in the fish tank had developed and grown into fish. 

Kate, Dana, and Jordyn collected water samples to ship today.  One set of vials is going to be shipped UPS, another set will be brought on the plane as carry on, and a third set will be shipped in checked luggage.