Travis and Michelle Fitzgerald's blog

Well, Christmas time is approaching very quickly. It seems like every year, it sneaks up faster and faster. This year the holiday had the help of a Shuttle flight to distract Michelle and I from the usual build-up.

The Shuttle flight is STS-116/12A.1. This mission will be installing a small spacer truss, and reconfiguring the power and thermal control systems onboard. Today they completed a huge part of the mission by successfully retracting a solar array far enough for the new solar arrays, delivered on the last mission (12A), to begin their rotations to track the Sun. There's still a lot of work to do, but this is a step in the right direction.

Michelle and I are not directly involved with this mission, but are taking the opportunity to observe the activities (flight follow, in NASA terms). Michelle has also sat with more senior members of her group as they perform their activities during this flight (this type of observation is called "On-the-Job" training, or OJT'ing). She was on console to OJT docking, and will also be OJT'ing undocking.

All while these events are unfolding in space (and MCC), we are trying to fit in time to finish (...and start...) our Christmas shopping. Busy, busy!