Question:
What was your most exciting moment aboard the KAO?

ANSWER from Dr. Diane Wooden on October 12, 1995:
My most exciting moment aboard the KAO was when we saw the R comet piece
from the Comet Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter.  I was flying with a team of
Astronomers and we were measuring spectroscopic signatures of chemical
changes in the atmosphere of Jupiter due to the heat of the comet fragment
impact.  I was operating the computer that runs the spectrometer and we
had the strip chart running.  The strip chart had about 1/4inch of travel
representing the signal of the planet Jupiter.  We waited... the impact
time came and we waited... Then suddenly the strip chart went to swing to
10inches side-to-side. We detected the heat from the impact!  Then it took
about 30 minutes for the heat to radiate away, and for the strip chart to
fade to about 2 times the size before the impact.  The impact was such a
DRAMATIC and fast event!  (I saw Comet Halley, Supernova SN1987A, and
other events from the KAO as well). 

Dr. Diane Wooden, NASA Ames Research Center