With its iconic bulbous shape the Super Guppy is hard to miss – this quick clip from NASA Johnson shows some of the interiors of the Guppy including brief glances of the cockpit and the bewildering fuselage skeleton. (Not shown but equally as mystifying is the way the front of the plane opens up like a door to insert cargo!)
NASA’s David Elliott and a team of pilots and engineers who operate the agency’s Super Guppy aircraft are responsible for transporting some of the biggest elements of spacecraft to locations around the country. The Super Guppy has played an important role carrying pieces of Orion, such as the primary structure of the crew module, to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for outfitting and processing in advance of its 2018 mission that will take the uncrewed spacecraft, launched atop the Space Launch System rocket, about 40,000 miles beyond the moon.
BONUS video of the preparation and takeoff of a Super Guppy:
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.