WOW.
WHAT.
A.
WEEK.
This week without a doubt has been the most fulfilling of the summer, if not my life (straight up). So, over the last two weeks I have been mostly working at Adler preparing for the ACS (altitude control system) test launch. To recap, the last NITELITE payload fell into Lake Michigan, so the whole system had to be rebuilt. We rebuilt the system, and the time had come to test it! The test did not go as planned (naturally) so now we’re continuing testing in order to optimize the system for the Chicago launch at the end of the month. The next day, I went with Far Horizons into the field (more like the lake) to work on the other major project in the lab, the Aquarius Project. This project aims to sift moon rocks (& meteorites) out of the bottom of Lake Michigan. We drove to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and I commandeered my fellow intern at the U.S. Forest Service in Milwaukee because of his geology major and favorite pastime, hanging out at the beach looking for cool rocks. We hopped on the boat Thursday to test the sled that the teen interns in the Aquarius Project designed.
The system didn’t really work the first day, and so Dan and I ran to Walmart and Lowe’s in order to find ways to optimize the design on such short notice. We found that the lake floor was covered in Quagga mussels, a cousin of the Zebra mussel, and tons of soft, flocculent matter. We knew that most likely there were plenty of mussels above the clay sediment layer of the lake floor, but the images were nothing like scientists had expected. Therefore, we decided to add screws like metal cleats to the sled in order to give the piece more traction in order to rotate and hopefully obtain some moon rocks. As it turned out, we were able to get the wheels of the sled to rotate, but we so far have not found any space rocks. Overall, it was an incredible experience, and I'll never have to sleep on the floor of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum again! (cross your fingers)