A lesson from outer space

Students, faculty and the boys of a local Cub Scout troop gathered on campus Thursday afternoon for a lesson in how capricious technology can be.

They were witnesses to an initially glitchy but eventually successful teleconference with multimillionaire Greg Olsen, founder of the Princeton-based company Sensors Unlimited, who is currently orbiting Earth on the International Space Station as the world's third tourist in space.

Before the teleconference, a home video was shown of Olsen's launch, which took place on Oct. 1 at a site in Kazakhstan.

"You could watch a clip of liftoff on TV, but to get the home video and see the firsthand experience is very unique," said Joe Montemarano, director for Industrial Liaison and Government Outreach for PRISM, who helped organize the teleconference.

As the audience waited in anticipation for the video feed, a technician spoke in Russian to the Russian command station over a long-distance call, which was supposed to be connected to the ISS to relay a video and audio feed.

After 20 long minutes of unsuccessful attempts, during which audience members suggested that smoke signals might be more effective, the screen suddenly showed colored bars and switched to live video feed of a lanky-looking man in a blue space suit, floating in front of two flags with the University shield and the Sensors Unlimited logo, surrounded by complicated computer equipment.

Though the video had been secured, the enthusiastic applause was premature. There was still audio trouble, and only those who could read lips could decipher Olsen's exuberant gestures and speech.

Finally, after more adjusting by technicians from both the U.S. and the Russian sides, audio capability was enabled, and Olsen was able to address the audience.

He noted the technological difficulties that went into the teleconference. "This is what we're all about," he said. "One of the things I've learned out in space is that we forget how limited technology is and how far we still have to go and how many opportunities there still are."

Olsen explained that he was technically not in zero gravity. Circling the earth at an altitude of 210 miles, he still experienced some slight pull of gravity.

Olsen was originally scheduled to answer questions from the audience, but communication was only possible in one direction. Instead, he took the time to explain how he felt, anticipating that it was probably one of the main questions.

"I'm feeling great, no problems whatsoever, but I do feel a bit jetlagged. Seeing eight sunrises a day really whacks you out," he said, eliciting laughs from the audience. "The best part for me is just floating in the air and looking out the window and seeing the earth."

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Olsen said he had passed over New Orleans and seen all the flooding, noting that everything they could see was dependent on weather and lighting and that he had actually crossed Princeton yesterday.

According to Montemarano, the teleconference, which was also broadcast on TigerTV via the local Patriot cable company, experienced connection problems because of the sheer number of relays that had to be made.

"Part of the reason for today's delay was because of a problem with the video transmission from the Russian side," Montemarano said. "We had to get the U.S. side to send signals to Russian command, which relayed to Eurovision and then to Patriot. When you have lots of hand offs, different problems come up."

A test was conducted on Monday for the teleconference, and no signal was received, which caused the organizers to warn the audience beforehand that the teleconference might not be successful.

"I guess it went a lot like research, some things work and some didn't, and in the end we all learned something. I now have a much better appreciation for how lucky you are when technology does work because obviously, more often then not, there are always these glitches that come up," Montemarano said.

A company is born

Founded in 1991, Sensors Unlimited collaborated closely with POEM, which has now become PRISM. The partnership was one of the first in the University's industrial affiliation program that allows companies to interact with faculty and students and have access to labs during the research phase of their development.

"It feels good to be back. We're coming back to our roots," Marshall Cohen, CEO and President of Sensors Unlimited, said in his introduction to the teleconference. "All of us are enjoying this vicariously. It's always good publicity even though his trip won't help the company directly."

The teleconference was planned about a month ago, many weeks before Olsen's launch Saturday.

"The original idea was to have local TV stations broadcast either through satellite or cable, but that didn't come through," said Ivan Lam, IT manager at Sensors Unlimited, who helped organize the event. "The timing was bad because the broadcast was during primetime."

Montemarano arranged facilities for the telecommunication and got cable companies involved to transmit the feed.

Local cable provider Patriot Media agreed to take the signal and feed it through TigerTV, while another vendor was broadcasting the feed over the internet.

"I feel wonderful," Olsen told the audience. "This is great, and I look forward to seeing you all in two weeks. Keep up the science and technology; it really does work."

— Includes reporting by Princetonian Senior Writer Neir Eshel.