Today was our last day at Ellington Field.  Before packing up our experiment to ship it back to Seattle, we needed to conduct a few ground tests to compare against our flight tests.  We ran a few different configurations on the centrifuge and also shook a box vertically by hand using only the force of gravity to sort a sample.  Then we packed up our things and sealed the glove box in the shipping crate. Cameron said goodbye to his senior project before we packed up.

We were able to use our badges to get into Space Center Houston—the visitor’s center at Johnson Space Center.  We took a tour of Mission Control, the Flight Vehicle Mock Up Facility and the “Rocket Park” which had a number of rocket bodies and engines.  We also spent a considerable time in the gift shop loading up on NASA swag.  Check out the Photo Gallery for more pictures of our trip to JSC.

The team had our last dinner together at a local barbeque restaurant to celebrate our great week.  After dinner, we all said goodbye to Chris before he left for his summer internship on the east coast.

The rest of the team emptied out the sorted samples and recorded our data.  Once everything was measured and recorded, we cleaned up and spent the rest of the night relaxing in our rooms and the hotel pool.  It was a long week, but well worth the hard work.