The Blue Flame Building in Downtown El Paso became mission control for dozens of students from the Socorro and Canutillo independent school districts. Students from Socorro ISD’s Americas and Socorro high schools were among 200 scholars from the United States and Canada who received a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to communicate with NASA's Orion spacecraft during the historic Artemis I mission in December 2022.
Launched on Nov. 16, the uncrewed Orion spacecraft traveled more than 1.4 million miles on a path around the moon before splashing down to earth in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11. The flight marked NASA’s first step toward landing the first woman and the first person of color on the moon.
"I'm super grateful, and I'm super excited that (SISD and NASA) were able to give us this opportunity," said Americas High School senior Alejandra Galvan. "It's like a goal that we can work toward. It shows us that anything is possible if we work hard."
Riding aboard Orion was Callisto, a technology demonstration payload developed by Lockheed Martin, which combined Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant and Cisco’s Webex videoconferencing platform to test how commercial technology could assist future astronauts on deep space missions.
According to a NASA press release, the payload aimed to “demonstrate how astronauts and flight controllers can use human-machine interface technology to make their jobs simpler, safer and more efficient, and advance human exploration in deep space."
Students in the Blue Flame Building tested the technology, sending questions via the Webex iPad to NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston. A person in NASA's mission control would ask Alexa the question activating the device.
“I think it’s a great thing how they’ve adapted Alexa to help astronauts,” Galvan said. “I think it’s quite interesting.”
Yolanda Acuña, SISD instructional technology specialist, said allowing students to communicate with the spacecraft through the deep space network was one way to get them more interested in STEM careers.
“Math and science are the future,” Acuña said. “Hopefully, exposing our students to opportunities like this will get them more interested in math, science, and engineering. Our goal is to get more of that information out there to land more people on the moon and explore space, and eventually, more jobs will come (together) with everything they’re being exposed to today.”
Students also got the chance to hear from Jaqueline Acuña, Orion test and launch operations lead for Lockheed Martin and Yolanda Acuña’s sister, about her experience working on Callisto.
Barbara Walker, account manager for CISCO Systems, said the event was part of Cisco’s Tech for Good initiative because the company believes that the internet should power an inclusive community. She hoped that the event inspired students to want to go to the moon someday.
“If one student walked away saying I want to be an astronaut, I would say this was a huge success,” Walker said.
According to NASA, Artemis 2 is scheduled to launch in 2024.
NASA Webex videoconference event photos
Published March 3, 2023
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