These 5:30 mornings just keep on stacking up! Breakfast at the hotel was similar to usual, with today being a more ‘savoury’ day, the burritos, potato mixture, bacon as well as some pastries making the daily change from pancakes.

This morning’s first activity at the space center was a tour around one of the mars and moon exhibitions. There were lots of information panels, as well as plenty of interactive activities to keep us out of mischief for a while! These included a mars rover simulation to drive, a gravity simulation game where you had to get a ball out of earth’s orbit into the moon’s, launch a plastic bottle rocket, investigate changes in nutrients on plant growth, and look at samples of rock from asteroids through a microscope.

We also got a chance to visit the ‘independence plaza’ which is where they have one of the training Shuttles (Independence) and one of the modified Boeing planes which became one of the few Shuttle Carrying Aircrafts- this involved serious reinforcements and changes to how it flew in order to be able to ferry the Shuttles, now retired, from location to location. The inside of the shuttle was preserved and the living space was tiny! It was hard to believe just how long so many people had to fit into it… The shuttle now houses a mini-museum of its history, which was fascinating to walk through and we had a lot of fun exploring!

Next we hopped back on the bus for our journey to the NBL (neutral buoyancy lab). On the bus, we also got the ChallengeX results! In our group, 1st and 2nd place were Gold 2 (Jemima, Tess, Izzy, Alicia, Zenita) and White 2 (Emma, Chielin, Maddie, Elizabeth) respectively, who would then, much to their dismay at having to present again in front of all the groups, proceed to the finals. The Lunar-Tics were delighted to have placed 3rd, earning lots of points without having to do it again bwahhaahahhaaaa
Note from Emma: Arnie’s team were very pleased to not have to do any more work. As Jemima and I were roommates, our room quickly (and sarcastically) became the ‘party room’… ready to polish our projects for presenting in front of ~200 people and a panel of experts (yikes)!

The NBL is where full plastic models of various space modules are submerged in a 12m deep pool (the world’s largest pool by volume – it took a month to fill the pool up completely), meaning astronauts can train on them, getting used to the environment similar to the microgravity of space before they go. There was a giant hydraulic crane system attached to the roof which was used to move the models, as well as models of the ISS- it used to have models of the shuttles, and the NBL can also be used for practising ‘Splashdown’ exits like they used for some Apollo missions and will use for the Orion.

There were even some real astronauts (Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover) training when we were there, visible by their bright yellow life support cables and white space suits if they came close enough to the surface. It was fascinating to watch, especially since due to apparent depth (Thanks Mr B!) they appeared really close to the surface even though we knew they must’ve been around 6 or more meters deep.

Lunch was at the ‘Zero G’ cafe, as per usual while at space school. This is an open dining area with a few different counters with a range of food options, such as pizza, burgers, hot dogs, sandwiches, salads and soup. The food here was pretty nice despite ‘too many chips!!!!!’, and we were happy to have some healthy options as well.

After this we excitedly returned to the bus to head off on our own scuba diving adventure. We were driven to another pool which was a bit less fancy than the NBL (imagine the paperwork to get us in there!!!!), and were divided in half. While one group got changed, the other was introduced to another robotics challenge- constructing a method for a sphero robot to carry a ‘payload’ of a ping pong ball in a race across the pool, without getting it wet. We had bits of pool noodle and various sticks and clips at our disposal, and had a lot of fun creating little boats for the spheros to pull. Racing them was pretty entertaining, especially when some started taking on water and other spheros disconnected from the iPods we were using to control them- it was a lot of fun.

Meanwhile the other group was diving. First we got into our ‘suits’ which had the oxygen tank and mouthpiece attached, strapping ourselves in and having weights attached so we could actually get under the water! Next we had to learn to trust the oxygen tank and get used to ‘mouth breathing’, which was such a weird feeling and kind of challenging! We learned some other skills, such as mask clearing underwater, by pressing on the top and breathing out through your nose, and using the button to clear water out of the mouthpiece. After we were clear with hand signals for ‘ok’, ‘stop’, ‘go up’, ‘go down’, ‘trouble’, ‘lobster’ and ‘shark’ (just in case we had some visitors to the pool…!?!?!?) and had suited up with fins, we were ready to go, and swum a few laps to get used to the diving apparatus. Then it was time to go to the deep end! As we went down further and further, it was important to equalise our ear pressure otherwise it got very uncomfortable. It felt quite unreal to be able to stay underwater for so long without coming up! Then we had a team challenge, where half had to build an ‘airlock’ structure out of pipes, and then the others had a race to swim through and collect rocks with a grabber device and bag, before racing back to the other end. We then returned to the surface, with slightly tired lungs and jaws from gripping the mouthpiece for dear life, as well as a very sore head from whacking it against the oxygen tank one too many times, but very happy and excited after such a cool experience!

We were running early returning back to Space U, which meant we had an hour in the Space Center gift shop! This was very exciting as it is a huge shop with shelves bursting with interesting things, from t-shirts to snow globes, mission patches to science kits and plush planets. The bus was considerably fuller when everyone got on with their bags of shopping!

Dinner was at the Cheesecake Factory, which as the name implies, is a restaurant that serves cheesecake (amongst other things). We had the choice between a vegan cob salad, turkey burger or steak and vegetables. Unfortunately, though edible, the meal did not live up to all the hype. With a measly vegetable serving, severely overcooked meat and a dry “block of rice that could be cut with a knife” (Emma 2018), at least the cheesecake served with a (very) gelatinous strawberry sauce was nice!

Then it was back to the hotel for MORE ChallengeX prep for the finalists- such fun… This thing never ends!