Green Card Celebration

After six years of a bizarre, time-consuming, and expensive application process, a member of the RXTE team finally received his "green card" (officially a Permanent Resident Card, which is no longer green) from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly the INS). A surprise party was held in the Building 2 "dungeon" to celebrate this happy event. In addition to congratulations and best wishes, the guest of honor was presented with a "GO GREEN" cap. Fittingly two days earlier the Washington Post ran a front page story entitled "Immigration Agency Mired in Inefficiency."

Memorial Day Picnic

As usual the neighborhood celebrated Memorial Day with a picnic on the traffic island of the cul-de-sac. Nearly everyone on the street participated with some additional guests for spice. A serious thunderstorm drove everyone inside, but hardly dampened spirits. Fortunately the rain stopped in time to enjoy the HSMs.

Her Majesty Visits GSFC

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip graced GSFC with a visit today May 8th. The visit began at a control center in Building 13 (Marker B on this map) with a video conference with three astronauts on the Space Station (American Suni Williams and two Russians) with British-born astronaut Michael Foale standing next to the Queen acting as a go between. For some reason the Queen never directly addressed the astronauts on the Station. The Queen then left Building 13 and walked along Road No. 5 past thousands of star-struck GSFC employees to the official welcoming ceremony in the Building 8 Auditorium (Marker A). About 250 GSFC employees, including yours truly, were selected by lottery to attend. The ceremony began with dozens of children from the GSFC Child Development Center singing "It's A Small World". They looked very cute in their GCDC T-shirts. The youngsters were remarkably well behaved considering they had to sit quietly for more than an hour. The actual ceremony was rather brief. The high point was Sen. Mikulski and Rep. Hoyer giving the Queen a framed image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The Queen did not address the audience. On the way out NASA Administrator Mike Griffin described to the Queen the important features of the freshly mounted posters on the walls. Next stop was a tree planting ceremony at the GSFC Visitor Center (Marker C).

A highlight of the morning was watching the astronauts chat with each other on NASA TV before the Queen arrived. After a minute or so Michael Foale announced that he was going to say "over" when he was finished talking (because there was a delay of several seconds on the video link). The astronauts then proceeded to demonstrate their unfamiliarity with this standard protocol for the next 15 minutes. (Perhaps this is why the Queen never directly addressed the astronauts in the Space Station.) After a couple of minutes Foale said that it looked like the three astronauts could be in a 1-g environment here on Earth (ignoring Suni's hair) and asked them to do something to show that they were in space. Without any hesitation each of the three did a graceful somersault as if this were the most natural thing in the world. Suni is an interesting character -- she ran the Boston Marathon while on the Station. She was mostly on message, but also hinted that 5 months is a long time to be on the Station.

Journey to the Swift Science Team Meeting 2007

The Swift Science Team meeting took place at Penn State U. on May 1st and 2nd; it was followed by a meeting of the UVOT instrument team the next day. I took advantage of the trip from GSFC on April 30 to bike on the Heritage Rail Trail County Park in York County, Pennsylvania. I started near Mile Post 18 (Marker A on this Google interactive map), and turned around at Hanover Junction (Marker C). The trail goes through the historic Howard Tunnel (Marker B; left photo), one of the oldest railroad tunnels in the country. There were some large bikes along the route (right photo). The warm and sunny day was just about perfect for biking.




I was going to stop at Maple Donuts in York, but decided that it was too far out of the way. Fortuitously there was a branch directly across the street (Marker D) from where I stopped for gas at Exit 34 on I-83. I was the only customer, but the staff was very friendly.


Harrisburg's Capital Area Greenbelt offers almost 20 miles of bike paths that circle the city. I rode along the Susquehanna River in River Front Park from near the Italian Lake Park (Marker F) to the I-83 bridge with a tour of City Island via the pedestrian only Walnut St. Bridge (Marker G; right photo). About two thirds of the width of the bridge is a metal grate, which is shunned by the pedestrians but not cyclists. If you look down while cycling, the grate mostly disappears and you seem to be floating over the river.


I returned to Harrisburg on the trip home, parked in the old Shipoke neighborhood (Marker H), and had a short evening bike ride. At night the Walnut St. Bridge is lit by hundreds of small lights.