Very last November, Mike Hopkins and Victor (Ike) Glover took a excursion to an incredible vacation location. It was 250 miles absent … straight up.
20-seven hrs afterwards, their SpaceX capsule docked at the International House Station.
As Hopkins and Glover close to the close of their six-thirty day period mission, NASA gave “Sunday Early morning” correspondent David Pogue an wonderful option: a are living online video chat with Mike and Ike in place!
“You indicated that you can find truly no up or down,” Pogue said. “So, is there any reason that one particular of you couldn’t transform head-down? The blood’s not dashing to your head, Victor?”
“Not at all,” laughed Glover. “Not at all. In actuality, it isn’t going to seem to be odd to me until I look at Hopper and go, ‘Why is Hopper upside-down?'”
CBS News
Glover shown how to get all around, by pushing off surfaces with his hands (“…and there he goes!”).
The Room Station isn’t really rather as futuristic-seeking as movie spaceships. It truly is about the size of a soccer field. The U.S., Russia, Canada, Europe, and Japan began building it in 1998, and they have never actually stopped.
NASA
The bedrooms aren’t a great deal greater than cellular phone booths – in essence a bag to maintain you in place, and a couple of laptops. “We have ’em on the sides, but we also have ’em on the ceiling, and we have ’em on the deck,” Hopkins claimed.
Each individual astronaut spends two hours a working day doing the job out. There is a fat machine (with vacuum tubes rather of weights), a treadmill with bungee cords, and an training bicycle. “Due to the fact we are in room, we will not need to have to sit down when we use this bike, so you will find no seat,” claimed Glover.
You will find a explanation for all that training: Zero-gravity life does a actual variety on your body.
Pogue requested, “Are there any prolonged-expression consequences that really don’t return when you’ve been on Earth for a even though?”
“There can be, unquestionably,” Hopkins replied. “It is really hard to stop having some bone decline. But following my previous mission, I missing about 2.5% bone density. And it took a long time for that to kinda appear back again.”
Hopkins and Glover have also mastered the finer points of dining in place, demonstrating how to make – and try to eat – a peanut-butter-and-jelly cracker.
And for the reason that your internal 2nd-grader possibly wants to know, Hopkins described: “And so, a few issues about our toilet: You can see there is a can listed here. And this can, which is in which the reliable waste is gathered. And then the urine is gathered in this hose. For the reason that we obtain the urine separately, we’re equipped to recycle that urine.”
Sure, the astronauts recycle their pee. In area, h2o is a valuable source.
The station lately celebrated 20 many years of getting constantly occupied.
When asked what he skipped most in the course of his time up there, Glover replied, “I overlook my household. I just can’t wait to see my little ones at the airport or wherever I bump into them initially.”
Hopkins additional, “I will also explain to you 1 of the points I overlook most: temperature. Up in this article, it never adjustments. It truly is often 70°, you can find no wind, there’s no rain, there is certainly no snow, no humidity. I signify, it can be just continuously the similar.”
“Listening to Hopper say ‘rain’ reminded me: I miss the shower!” Glover laughed.
On the other hand, former astronaut Peggy Whitson occasionally misses place. She instructed Pogue, “Immediately after my to start with flight, I returned to Earth and I was laying on the mattress, and threw the covers off and just did the lightest drive on the bed, and anticipated to float to the lavatory. And I was like, oh my, it can be gonna choose a great deal much more perform to get there than that!”
Whitson has put in extra time up there than any American, a lot of it as commander of the room station – a grand total of 665 days in house. “That’s the equal of a flight to Mars, is that correct?” requested Pogue.
“Indeed,” she said. “You could get to Mars and again in 665 times. And so, I am evidence it truly is doable.”
Twenty decades of house station science have yielded hundreds of breakthroughs in fields like weather conditions, astronomy, biology, resources, and specifically medication – Alzheimer’s, most cancers, heart disorder, and so on.
“Salmonella provides you food stuff poisoning,” Whitson claimed. ‘It really grew to become much more virulent in place, and then they were being in a position to essentially create a vaccine for that.”
Worms, mice and rats are usually on board, far too, to help NASA study the extended-expression results of zero-gravity. They appear to like it just fantastic.
“Comprehension the physics of how issues get the job done with out gravity, we occasionally figure out ways to much better fully grasp how points function in gravity,” Whitson said.
But for the humans on board, seeing our dwelling from place is normally amazing. Whitson stated, “You search out the window, and you see world Earth, And you look at it, and you see how skinny this environment is, and how sensitive it looks. If you occur to be in the vicinity of a window and you’re flying in excess of the Sahara Desert, the complete room will get this golden glow – peachy, orangey glow.
The ideal views from the place station are in what is named the Cupola.
“The Cupola is the window that faces down at the Earth, and it is a pretty unbelievable watch,” reported Hopkins. “And it definitely hardly ever does get outdated.”
NASA
For more facts:
Story created by Alan Golds. Editor: Ed Givnish.
World wide web further:
View David Pogue’s complete dialogue with astronauts Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins:
About the Author
