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you
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ignition sequence start
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good morning and welcome to Mission
Control Houston and the International
Space Station flight control room is
where a team of specialists is always on
duty to keep a close eye on the systems
of the space station and work with the
expedition 59 crew members through their
daily agenda of science research and
station maintenance with all of the
station's power channels now operational
after a partial outage early in the week
commander oleg kononenko and his
crewmates are wrapping up their regular
workday while looking forward to next
week's arrival of a dragon at the door
with tons of needed supplies welcome to
space to ground I'm Dan Huot fixing the
station's power system this ain't like
Dustin crops boy on Monday flight
controllers found an issue with one of
the station's main bus switching units
which distributes power to two of the
station's eight power channels while
Astro droids still aren't a thing teams
in the ground were able to control the
robotic helper known as Dexter to swap
out that failed unit with a spare after
some quick tests and checkouts the new
unit was online and the station was back
at full power and with the space station
fully operational it's almost time for
another dragon resupply craft to take
flight SpaceX is ready to fly their 17th
resupply mission to the station packed
with about 5500 pounds of supplies and
science experiments dragon will ride a
falcon 9 into orbit and begin a chase
down of the space station it'll make the
station run in fractions of a parsec and
arrive a few days later where crew
members will be waiting to robotically
capture it so tune in ever wanted to go
to the tashi station to pick up some
power converters but had too many chores
one robotic helper that just arrived on
station could help out astro be nasa's
new free flying robotic system will help
astronauts reduce time they spend on
routine duties able to work autonomously
or via remote control the set of three
robots are designed to do things like
take inventory document experiments with
their
cameras or even work together to move
cargo throughout the station while they
won't be able to help you with your
lightsaber skills they got their first
chance to power up inside station this
week and will soon be flying around to
make life a little easier for crew
members living and working in outer
space keep sending in your questions
using the hashtag space-to-ground we'll
see you next week and may the force be
with you
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NASA TV and nasa.gov will go live at
1:30 a.m. Houston time Saturday with
live coverage of the launch of the
dragon cargo ship dan referred to launch
itself is targeted for 148 a.m. and a
successful launch on Saturday means
rendezvous and capture and installation
of the vehicle to the International
Space Station this coming Monday May 6
we'll have live coverage of all those
events too flight director Anne McLain
will be one of the station crew members
involved with the unpacking in the
repacking of the Dragon cargo ship it's
all part of what she trained for during
more than two years of preparation for
her first spaceflight McLain says that
her training benefited from something
she learned about achieving goals it's
actually something she learned during
her time playing rugby
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so the first time I played rugby I was
actually 18 it was the year before I
went to West Point and I was walking
across the Gonzaga University campus and
I saw a group of people playing a sport
that was unlike anything I've seen there
was a lot of tackling I couldn't figure
out what was going on and one of them
asked me if I was interested in trying
it out and the very next day I started
in my first game of rugby I played
throughout my time at West Point and
then when I was a Marshall scholar I was
fortunate to study postgraduate in
England and there I started playing at a
higher level in 2004 I was elected to
the u.s. national team I was fortunate
to play a lot of rugby and then I also
coached a little bit right before I went
to test pilot school my last weekend
playing rugby was the weekend prior to
finding out I became an astronaut so
rugby is surprisingly helped me a lot as
an astronaut and when I'm training in
the space suit in the EMU and we're
working in our in our large pool the
neutral buoyancy lab underwater we're
under there for six hours at a time and
you really work yourself to physical and
mental exhaustion the only other time
that I've hit that point of exhaustion
is the 60th minute of a rugby match when
your body gets that physically tired
you can't mentally give up you actually
have to think about things more
deliberately with more clarity because
you're more prone to mistakes and it's
the people that can overcome that
physical and keep going with the player
that win both rugby matches and they
find themselves successful trading in
the spacing
i am anne mcclain and i am an astronaut
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the International Space Station is the
site of science in many different
disciplines from investigators who are
trying to take advantage of the
weightless environment to gain new
insights for example the station is home
to equipment that could help answer some
big questions in modern physics the cold
atom lab facility produces clouds of
atoms that are 10 billion times colder
than deep space and thanks to the
microgravity environments on the space
station we can observe these atoms for
much longer than we can on the ground
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physics is one kind of science being
done on the International Space Station
biology research is another and the MVP
the multi-use variable gravity platform
is designed for research involving many
different kinds of organisms and cell
types and it's especially important for
fruit fly research it'll allow
researchers to study larger sample sizes
than before and will also support fly
colonies for multiple generations we're
looking to answer the question what is
the effect of spaceflight on the host
the host here being the fruit fly or
Drosophila and also on a pathogen so the
bacteria actually is one that can infect
a fly very similarly to the way would
infect for example a human or any other
organism the genetic makeup of the fruit
fly is actually very similar to humans
if you took the human genome and you
looked at all the genes that you know
are important for function in that
category in that library of genes
there's 75 percent similarity
between the human genes and the fruit
fly genes in a box this size thousands
of flies can be flown and brought back
so that even if you see an important
difference that is small you can get
statistically significant data because
you get 3,000 flies or 4,000 flies
coming back in a box that side we have a
very nice new piece of hardware the
company tech shot we've been working
together with them for the last few
years in developing a very capable piece
of hardware what's so special about the
tech shot MVP is really that there are
two internal carousels inside the unit
and each one of them can produce
anywhere from zero to two genes so it'll
be the only payload of its kind in the
US segment that can do this the sample
modules themselves do transport to and
from the station in the cargo vehicles
but the the payload itself the Locker
stays on board the station permanently
we are interested in
human exploration we want to go to moon
we want to go to Mars we want to explore
the environment outside of low Earth
orbit and to do that we need the help of
these surrogate model organisms because
once we understand the genes in the
pathways then we know what the
countermeasures are that we're working
towards
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the International Space Station is
helping scientists learn more about
plants to the plant gravity perception
investigation is germinating seeds in
microgravity to study the plant's
ability to detect gravity and then adapt
to grow in that environment which of
course will be necessary on future
missions to deep space when crews will
need to grow some of their own food
think about the fact that the shape of
every plant you've ever seen is the
result of gravity sensing every plant
has gravity sensing cells and those
cells contain dense bodies they're
packed with starch and when that organ
is displaced away from its starting
position those dense starch-filled
packets they fall to the lower wall of
the cell what we don't know is much
about what happens after that and so our
question our experiment is aimed at
what's the least amount of gravity that
a plant can detect and cause that kind
of sedimentation and the way we're
getting at that is to add fractional
gravity to plants as they grow and ask
the plant how about that can you feel
that much how about here's a little bit
more we'll turn it up just a little more
can you feel that
we're growing 120 of these at all
different gravity levels on the station
so we have planned a whole series of
experiments at fractional gravity levels
while we're visualizing the plants at
the Grove so we have a cell culture
chamber that has two rotors the
centrifuge rotors and these sort of
stack they align along the radius of the
rotor at different distances and the
amount of gravity experienced by the
plant varies depending on how far it is
along that rotor on our lowest treatment
I think is down to about six one
thousandth of a G all the way up to one
G to get a good control for her husband
plant shape is critical in breeding
programs to determine optimal growth for
crop productivity in roots and in shoots
so lots of potential applications both
off the earth
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during their time on the International
Space Station many astronauts had the
opportunity to participate in spacewalks
which are critically important to keep
the station functioning properly to
support the science that goes on inside
and outside the vehicle in this
demonstration video astronaut Ricki
Arnold gives us a tour of the critical
parts of the spacesuit that keeps
astronauts safe as they perform
maintenance in the harsh environments
surrounding the space station
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so we are standing in the quest airlock
which is divided into two parts we have
the equipment lock and we have the crew
lock this equipment lock has a hatch
right here that closes and the crew lock
has another hatch the EMU or the extra
vehicular mobility unit is our spacesuit
and it's divided roughly into two parts
we have the hard upper torso which is
almost like a turtle shell it's a hard
fiberglass shell and then we also have
the lower torso assembly these space
suits are our own little spacecraft and
they have everything you need to keep
you alive out space for seven to eight
hours maybe even longer depending on how
hard you're working the only thing that
they do not have and they have radios as
oxygen has carbon dioxide scrubbing it
has temperature control it has
everything you need except for one thing
a restroom and so when we get ready for
our VA the first thing we put on the
morning in the morning is a diaper and
that's our first layer then over the
diaper we put on a pair of long johns
and that's to keep our arms and legs
from getting scraped up it also provides
a little bit of wicking in case you're
getting really hot and sweaty the next
layer is our liquid cooling garment and
the LC VG has little tubes running
through it which allow water to
circulate with inside the LCB g2 to
provide cooling when we're outside
working really hard so we've got the
diaper we've got long johns
we got the LC BG and then we're going to
wear our spacesuit
from the bladder on the inside which
maintains maintains pressure and that's
a rubberized bladder all the way out to
the white layer on the outside the crew
member inside the spacesuit is also
wearing this what we call a Snoopy calf
it's a communications cap we have a
radio so we can talk to not only to
Houston but we can talk to people on the
space station and to each other so we
wear this communication cap inside the
inside the helmet also a par another
component key component of the of the
EMU or a spacesuit as the helmet you can
see the helmet has a gold visor which
protects us from the the rays of the Sun
we can break down it's pretty bright out
there and this gold visor helps reflect
the Rays of the Sun so we can actually
see and operate in daylight at nighttime
we can raise this visor up gives us a
clearer view and additionally we have
helmet lights built into the helmet on
top of the helmet we also have
television camera so the ground is able
to watch us while we work through these
TV cameras the work is really all done
with hands and so our gloves are really
our most important piece of equipment in
order for us to work outside and one of
the real challenges of a spacewalk is
you have this heavy gloved hand which is
inflated so it wants to stay like it's
blown up like a balloon but we walk by
grabbing onto handrails and making our
way along the ISS so every time you move
your hand you're fighting against a
balloon that wants to inflate and then
on top of that all of our equipment is
based on using your hands too so after
six and a half seven hours of kind of
fighting against this glove it's a
really long day and your hands are
probably the thing that are most
exhausted after after seven hours out on
an Eevee a well we're going out to work
you probably saw me move this mini
workstation the way we carry our tools
is on a mini workstation which is
carried on the front every single tool
we use
is tethered to us we do not want to
accidentally create satellites our
primary way of mate mate remaining
attached to the ISS if we're not using
our hands are these wastes others and
you can see they just have a big hook
they go around a rail or anything else
on the ISS and latch on and actually has
a locking mechanism as well to hold us
nice and tight so we always always want
to have one of these attached if we're
not holding on with our hands as well
the back of the EMU has our life-support
system the life-support system contains
all the equipment we need from our from
a UHF radio down to the oxygen tank that
provide primary oxygen one of the
challenges inside the sealed environment
it's very easy to carry around an oxygen
with us but we generate a lot of carbon
dioxide particularly when we're out
there working very hard so to combat
that to deal with that we have these
canisters called medics canisters which
are just silver oxide they are carried
in the backpack along with a very large
battery which provides all the
electricity for us I don't have a
battery here to show you today because
we're in the process of charging and
we're about a month out from doing a
spacewalk and we've already started
getting ready for that so this bad ox
canister is about able to is able to
remove about seven to eight hours of
carbon dioxide that a human can generate
inside the spacesuit DBAs have allowed
us to build and maintain the ISS repair
mission critical Hardware investigate
malfunctions and stall new hardware and
the view unbelievable see you next time
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while today's astronauts work on the
international space station and train
for upcoming missions NASA is preparing
its next class of astronauts to be ready
for future assignments the members of
the 2017 astronaut class completed their
first year of astronaut candidate
training at the Johnson Space Center in
Houston last year here's a look at that
next group of space travelers as they
moved out of the classroom and into more
hands-on training first six months we're
really getting our feet under us just
getting to know one another really doing
mostly classroom type training next six
months has really picked up the pace a
lot and we've covered so many different
things everything from learning to do
spacewalks in the neutral buoyancy lab a
giant swimming pool
the first dives were incredible the team
of people that work at the neutral
buoyancy laboratory are amazing they did
work really hard to make it as much like
space as possible like doing a real
spacewalk getting in the suit for the
first time was just really surreal we
get into the suit get fresh rides it's
really cool
to finally get in that space suit for
the first time totally unreal I remember
being in the pool and looking at my
hands and
actual space suit gloves on and just
thinking this could possibly be real
life we went to New Mexico to study
geology but first of all we spent a week
here at Johnson Space Center working
with incredible group of PhDs and taught
us geology
very intense a week-long class we went
out to the upper orange region of the
Rio Grande del Norte and for that it was
really cool because we went to a region
that had a lot of volcanic activity and
we're basic trying to piece together the
story of how how that region formed we
were broken up into teams and we got to
actually go out and map different
structures in the fields pick up rocks
break them open with a hammer and
actually form our own hypothesis
set about trying to explore them there's
a really great experience
KC trip was incredible getting out there
and for me the first time to get to go
out and touch rockets it was really
incredible to see capsules we got to see
cst-100 got to see SpaceX for me I had
never been there before this
you know the site where we've launched
so many incredibly important missions
through NASA's
I had been there back in 2006 for a
shuttle launch and to be back almost 12
years later as we're getting ready for
Commercial Crew to launch from Cape
Canaveral again it sense the excitement
building in anticipation for that so
that was really cool to see and it was
really exciting for me to see just how
alive it really is today all of the
different vehicles that are being built
and to be launched right there it kind
of
the land survival trip we went to Maine
for that where the military does their
survival training as well and that
entailed a lot of learning things like
land navigation how to build shelters
but it was also especially important for
a team building and their dynamics it
was a great way to bond with the whole
a few of us have also gotten a chance to
work at ellington Field doing field
maintenance it's called so using the
t-38 as a way to train on
panicle tools doing repair
things like she metalwork and just
generally getting to know also some of
the mechanics
on Friday I have my first but wouldn't
call it integrated mastery so I'm it's
gonna be me in the mock-ups behind us
with the group of twenty to thirty
instructors because that goes in my
first exam first major exam for the
International Space Station across the
board at one of my favorite parts of
this job has been getting to know my
other classmates
everyone is so collaborative and really
working together to lift each other up
and building on each other's strong
points this group that's been incredibly
close and every single one of us adds a
lot of value to the team and I think
that's been one of the best parts of
being here in training here
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the space travelers of today and those
of tomorrow have at least one thing in
common with the explorers of old they
are all at the mercy of the weather the
astronauts and the systems of their
future space vehicles will have to be
protected from the radiation of deep
space and that's why today's scientists
are working hard to improve our ability
to accurately forecast a dangerous space
weather the space we travel through
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presented by science at NASA
when seafaring nations began to explore
new regions of the world one of their
biggest concerns in making the journey
safely was how to cope with whether they
could harness the wind for power they
could rely on the Sun and the stars for
navigation they could build sturdy ships
but if a storm rose suddenly they were
at nature's mercy more than five
centuries later our nation is once again
on the cusp of exploring new worlds and
once again one of our concerns about
travelling long distances is the weather
space weather while space is a vacuum
it's not 100 percent empty particles
energy and magnetic fields travel
through the void much of these emanate
from the Sun's corona as part of a
constant outward flow known as the solar
wind which stretches well beyond the
orbit of Neptune
there are also high-energy particles or
cosmic rays in the mix which travel vast
distances from dying stars or supernovae
Earth's magnetic field and relatively
thick atmosphere act as a shield against
the most harmful forms of this radiation
but in space there is no such deterrent
if we want to travel through this space
we need ways to protect our astronauts
these particles can affect our
technology tripping onboard electronics
dr. yari colada Vega space weather
scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center notes we are working
to forecast when these particles will be
at their peak such as during solar
flares or coronal mass ejections acute
exposure to these solar energetic
particles is a serious concern for
astronauts and instruments therefore
having a better understanding of when to
expect solar activity is important for
safely sending our astronauts and
spacecraft through space ironically such
space weather activity can actually
protect against another threat to
astronauts the sun's activity can block
dangerous cosmic rays coming from other
stars which are constantly present
illustrating the complexity of the
system NASA tries to understand and
mitigate for our space travelers over
time sea captains learned when to sell
their ships and when to stay in harbour
based on their accumulated knowledge of
the weather it's more risky to be on the
water in the Caribbean during hurricane
season and you'd want to consider
avoiding the northeast coast of America
during the height of winter
dr. colada vega says it's very similar
to what we're doing today we're
constantly developing and testing new
models to predict space weather and
we're constantly seeking new data to
refine those models a host of Helio
physics missions observe space from a
variety of vantage points not unlike
terrestrial weather sensors which work
in tandem to paint a bigger picture of
our space environment in August 2018
NASA launched the parker solar probe to
help us better understand the sun's
activity especially what drives the
solar wind and how energetic particles
get accelerated this data could be used
to improve models of space weather
forecasting ultimately helping us find
new and better ways to shield our
spacecraft and protect our astronauts
whether it was the oceans ancient ships
traveled through or the space we will
one day travel through we know this
keeping a watchful eye on the
environment around us is key to ensuring
safe passage
for more information about what matters
in space visit science.nasa.gov
if you'd like another look at any of the
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conveniently provided while you there
take a look at other cool stuff you can
find because there's lots of it about
NASA America's human spaceflight program
and while you're out there on the
Internet check out houston we have a
podcast that's folks here at nasa
talking about their work in all aspects
of space exploration the new episodes
post on fridays so today we post part
three of the heroes behind the heroes
series picking up as the stars of our
show fight off another technical
challenge to rescue the apollo 11
mission control tapes for posterity bend
for academic research go to nasa.gov
slash podcasts you can find today's
episode which is number 90 as well as
parts 1 & 2 & all of our previous
episodes and even more the full library
of all nasa podcasts all of which you
can also listen to on Apple podcast
google podcasts and SoundCloud this is
Mission Control Houston