PoSSUM - Day 0

Okay, I realize this is neither a drawing nor a poem, but this is my blog so I'm changing the rules. For the next week or so I'll be using this site to keep all my loyal readers (i.e. my family) up to date on my adventures in Florida with Project PoSSUM.

So what is Project PoSSUM, you may ask. Well, PoSSUM stands for Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere and this is a week of training 12 select people from around the world (myself included) to be citizen scientist astronauts. The main goal is to familiarize us with a suite of instruments that will photograph and measure noctilucent clouds, amazingly high altitude clouds that form at the very edge of space (about 85 km up). Then, hopefully, in a couple of years when the funding and vehicles are finalized, we'll be the ones to actually fly up there and collect the data (or help with other research programs).

Here's the program website: www.projectpossum.org - there's a lot of information, but you can get a good idea of what I'll be doing by watching the video on the front page. I recommend expanding it to full screen.

Today was my first travel day - driving all day from Indiana down to Tifton, Georgia. Tomorrow I'll drive the rest of the way to Daytona Beach and meet the other people in Class 1601. Keep checking back for updates!