Episode 5: What Makes A Crew? Interview With Astronauts Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon

space wants you we're going back to moon and then to Mars want to go to space let's go just getting to space isn't the easiest part draw it write it build it dream it innovate it invent it cuz once you get to space you actually have to live in it space wants you dead let's expand our thinking it's time to think outside of the box let's go go go go I star hello everyone and welcome to the cities and space podcast we're here to help you discover your future in space we're so happy to have you joining us today I'm your host Holly maler today we will be learning about the amazing Polaris program the Polaris Dawn Mission and discuss what what makes a successful crew to help us to do that we have a very special treat today we have not one but two guests joining us Polaris Dawn Mission specialist astronaut Sarah Gillis and Mission specialist and medical officer astronaut Anna menen together they will be walking us through the amazing trip they are getting ready to take to the Stars welcome both of you and thank you so much for being here how are y'all doing thanks for having us yeah thanks so much for having us so happy to be here well I am personally incredibly thrilled so I'm so excited to be talking about the Polaris program and the Polaris Dawn Mission with you today audience if you are not familiar with the Polaris program and this exciting new Mission that's about to happen I would suggest watching the Netflix series countdown inspiration 4 Mission to space it gives you a little backstory it's a great prequel and it will I will say it will blow your mind it's pretty amazing so ladies your team is preparing for a really amazing Mission targeted apogee of around 1,400 kilomet which is it's almost 900 miles above the Earth is that correct yep that's correct okay great get up there that is that is a little high so you'll be writing in the SpaceX Dragon resilience spacecraft and you're aiming to reach the highest Earth orbit ever flown by a crude Mission and you're breaking the Gemini record and you're going to be launching this possibly early this summer is that true w has a date been set not yet we are getting close though oh man I'm going to be watching this so I need to wrap my head around all of this the Polaris on Mission will launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the crew will spend five days in orbit in addition to the ape record you will be doing the first commercial space walk in the SpaceX designed Eva space SP suit students that stands for extra vehicular activity and you'll be the first crew to be testing the starlink laser Communications in space this will be really valuable for future space communication systems and on top of that you will also be doing not five not 10 or 20 but 40 yes that is correct audience 40 science and research experience ments including radiation testing among so many other tests all to help Advance human space flight and ultimately contribute to living in a multiplanetary world that in addition to the work you will be doing this will also benefit St JW's research hospital so so much of what you're doing for the experiments will be not only benefiting space but also here on Earth there is so much to talk talk about with all this Sarah if you could give us a little bit of an overview of the plans and how this is going to look on the mission and Anna if you would follow up I would love it if you could talk a little bit about these research experiments and all you have been planning for this amazing trip in that regard sure absolutely um so you've you know you just talked through some of our main mission objectives we're flying the highest Earth ever ever flown we will be attempting the first commercial spacewalk and a brand new SpaceX develop space suit and we'll be you know sending internet to the spacecraft over space lasers for the first time to communicate on a brand new um platform that's already a ton to do on a five-day Mission yeah on top of that though we are also as you mentioned trying to get through 40 different science and research experiments so every single second of our five days in space is going to be completely full um Anna's been most recently working with the timeline and I can tell you there is not a free second for us across the full five days yeah I would think you're going to be busy busy busy busy super super busy okay well Anna would you mind talking a little bit about some of these research experiments definitely so as you all mentioned we are doing approximately 40 research experiments and so a couple years ago we put out a call for proposals for experiments to be blown on this Mission and ultimately down selected to these 40 based on scientific interest um technical requirements crew involvement as well as the experiments abilities to take advantage of our unique Mission profile you know alluding to what you mentioned about doing things like really studying the radiation environment were in things like that and so we are we've been training for now you know a while to make sure that we have every single one of these protocols down and it it would take probably our whole podcast to talk through every one of them but I'll give you a couple of the highlights so there's a there's a handful of them that are targeting A syndrome called space flight Associated neuro ocular syndrome so basically what this is is that astronauts have experienced vision problems when they are are in space for long duration periods of time and so if you think about the what this problem presents is if you were to fly astronauts to for example Mars one day you it's a nine-month mission to get there but they land on the surface and you are expecting them to do work but they their vision is no longer good and they they have Vision issues that presents a real problem and so a good amount of the research experiments we are doing are is they're targeting better understanding the mechanisms Behind These vision changes and trying to figure out how we can mitigate them so that that problem doesn't arrive for human space Life future another one of the the categories of research that we're doing is associated with uh space motion sickness um you've heard of probably motion sickness here on Earth people 60% of people when they fly to space get Space motion sickness and for the first few days as they're trying to adapt to the microgravity environment but we don't have really great predictors of who's going to be afflicted by this so if you get sick on Earth doesn't necessarily mean you will get sick in space and vice versa and so if you think of the implications for that think of a future where we have a hundred people flying to space at the same time instead of you know four like we do on our space mission that means that you know you could have 60 people floating around and vomiting getting really sick and really just unable to to work and function well over those those first few days um that is not a that's not a great visual I've got to say so very real problem to solve and to try to better understand it try to better develop mitigation so that that isn't something that hits so many people in space so that's just a couple of examples at the end of the day you know I I studied biomedical engineering in my background and it is just so clear to me as we've been learning about all of these different research experiments how valuable it is to do all this work for our Collective future wow no this is going to be really beneficial for so many reasons right and so Sarah you know I was asking you a little bit about the schedule like what is going on will y'all start experiments immediately like you're G to get up there and then just hit it right away right yeah you know that's basically exactly what's going to happen we're going to get up there and actually as soon as we get to orbit our first experiment starts and we're focusing on the transitions to the microgravity environment as soon as it starts yeah um but then from there you know we'll get out of our suits and we we start adapting to life and space and um kind of aligned with our our one of our big mission objectives which is this first commercial space walk we'll actually start stepping through kind of in parallel a bunch of different checkouts and preparation for that you know you're stepping back and forth between research and preparation tasks but yeah basically 100% of our time that's not taken up with preparing for certain things is spent on research it's pretty impressive wow is there like a day on the 5-day mission that you're planning to do The Space Walk that's like a very very big deal the first commercial crew spacewalk right so do you plan to do it on day three what's what's the plan you actually nailed it we are planning on doing it on third day of the mission um there's a lot that goes into that um you know you need to make sure crew are feeling okay Anna mentioned in space motion sickness and uh we don't know what how each of us will feel in space so we need to make sure there's enough time for adapting and getting your feet under you so to speak in space but you know the flight day three is right about the perfect timing so that day on the mission is pretty much entirely dedicated to preparing for The Space Walk you know we have to do suit inspections on our suits we have to configure the capsule to make sure there's nothing that will float out when we actually go to open the hatch and then we'll actually get into final suitup and preparation for the the spacewalk and maybe to give you a little bit of information or details about what that would look like um all four of us are going to suit up and pressurize on 100% oxygen in our suits um and then from there once we've done leak checks and done all of the final prep work that we need will actually then vent the spacecraft typically for space walks on the space station you have an air loock and so what that means is crew members can just vent the atmosphere from a small volume without having to vent the entire space station we don't have an airlock so we have to vent the atmosphere from the whole spacecraft um so all four of us will be in those brand new space suits and then we'll vent the spacecraft before we can open the hatch and proceed outside is that risky in space flight everything about it is um an auster environment you know humans can't survive in space right and so this is a huge problem to tackle um performing a space walk and if you think about the future where we have hundreds of people going to Mars to the surface of Mars you can't just go there and not go outside you know we want to be able to explore and to do that we need to have space suits that support that and so this is really um the first step towards a suit that could you know be used to walk on the surface of Mars and this is an incredible opportunity to you know collect data on how it performs in space so uh you know it's been an incredible development effort over the last two years with the SpaceX team and there's a lot of considerations that should that have to go into the design of the suit and the design of the spacecraft um but it's been an incredible development effort and I have so much confidence in the SpaceX team working with them through suit development over the last two years um that I'm I'm just really excited to do this with the whole crew yeah this is really Monumental and I know we're going to talk a little bit more about the space suits in just a little bit I mean so obviously to be a part of the Polaris program and the Polaris Dawn Mission you you do you need to be a part of a team since coordination like you're discussing is essential to accomplish your objectives right um there are four of you going to space which includes Scott potit nicknamed the kid as Mission pilot Jared isikman the mission Commander not only of polaron but he was also commander of inspiration 4 which I gotta say I was very fortunate I got to interview him a year ago and he also has an amazing story so Sarah you are mission specialist Anna you are mission specialist and medical officer all of you have very distinct roles can you talk just a couple minutes about delineation of responsibilities like who exactly will be doing what you know really we will all be doing most things um we do dividing um I will add that like the team is not just the four of us in the spacecraft the team involves a fantastic team of Engineers and scientists and other people at SpaceX helping to make all of this happen so we really good point really good point we are really lucky to be part of this this huge Grand team making this Mission possible when it comes to the roles of the four of us in the spacecraft there is we like I said we really most of us do all of it um like Sarah said we will be all four suiting up and going down to vacuum during The Space Walk however Sarah and Jared will be the two going outside opening the hatch going outside performing like a test test Matrix to really put the the suit Mobility to the test uh then coming back down inside the spacecraft closing the Hat finishing buttoning it up so that we can come back to our nominal pressure um all four of us will do research but we do divide into teams at different time points so you know during one four hour block of research Sarah and I might be paired up but another four hour time block KD and I might be paired up to give you an example and so we are all four exec research at the same time but we tend to do it in teams to help each other out sometimes you need to to like work together to complete an experiment for example when we test out starlink we will be doing that all together really having you know dividing and conquering to make sure that we can test it to its full capacity and and really use the minutes that we have of starlink connection to our best um our best value and then when we we hit that high ape similarly we will all be testing that out learning from it taking some data during that that opportunity together um and so it's it's it's definitely a time where a mission where it's important that we really know how to work together and um complete our mission objectives as a team yeah and that's a really good point that was something I was going to ask you is I mean space is risky like I said oh my gosh is that risky everything about space is risky and if you don't have a really healthy cohesive well functioning team I mean it could be deadly right so you all have been training for is it two years how long have you'all been training about that yeah two years quite an intensive amount of time and as you said your team goes Way Beyond a team of four you've got a lot of boots on the ground also supporting you during this process like was there a moment when you were like we're ready we're ready for launch when it whenever it's come like we have got this down as a crew we know like how do you know when you feel really ready as a team right yeah so what's really cool so my background is actually starting on the Astronaut training team at SpaceX so I had the opportunity to build the training program for all of our crew members and then have trained most of the NASA astronauts well most of the astronauts overall that have flown in the Dragon spacecraft thus far and I think one of my favorite things is actually watching the team come together through the training process uh you're taking a group of experts in specific things you know you have the operators in mission control that know their specific systems or you have Anna in the spacecraft who's a mission director in Mission Control now bringing that expertise to the spacecraft or Jared as this really incredible pilot that has ton of flight experience or for kids same thing incredible Air Force background and you know me bringing experience with Astronaut training to the team you're bringing all of these incredible skill sets together but what's what's missing is you have to start figuring out how to use those skills to best benefit the team and at any given moment you could be the leader you could be the follower you have to learn how to actually coordinate and work to be most effective with that with that team so I love training people Crews our ground teams because it is so cool to see them grow together you learn exactly what you need to do when um so we're actually in this next month is we have a ton of training it's like a pretty jam-packed schedule with some of the biggest training objectives that we have as a crew as a crew both the four of us and then with the entire integrated ground team um so I think overall we have all the knowledge we need and now it's all about like demonstrating in every contingency scenario we can think of that we know how to respond as a team so I'm I'm really excited for the next couple of weeks um as we step into kind of the Final Phase of our training um but I know just watching this crew based on my experience that that they're ready for space flight and it's going to be just an incredible adventure to to finally get there with them that's really awesome and so I that it's quite different having been a trainer to now be the person who is training um Anna do you have any thoughts on that with with the training experience and the cohesiveness and knowing when you're ready well you know I think that one of the the joys of this experience has for me personally has been remembering my my feelings and experience and working on the ground side of of these flight op operations so working with the team in mission control and supporting our astronauts that are in our spacecrafts and so as we've been preparing as a larger team for this Mission I often reflect on um try to put myself back in that seat on the ground I'm sitting in the capsule in like the flight vehicle thinking back okay what is Mission Control doing right now what are they assessing right now what are their priorities um and trying to to remember that perspective and and contribute to our our greater team using that perspective but I would also just add in terms of like Readiness for for this Mission as a team I think that there have been a number of more of the like Team Building Development training pieces that we have done together that I I look back on as being really pivotal to our development and and some of those that stand out to me include we climbed a a volcano together at Mount Mount caxi in Ecuador at comes in at over 19,000 ft we also did skydiving with the US Air Force Academy together and and did five solo skydives um after going through really rigorous training as crew as a crew and so those are those are examples of experiences that I think really brought us together as a team really exposed us to both highs and lows um you know uncomfortable experiences moments that we had to really dig deep and work through together as teammates and I think those were some of the things that really built our our our strength as a team really good Insight you know um our uh our student curriculum and project and lesson for this podcast is really focused around this Mission and it's about making a crew and who is going to be essential for your crew of four and what are your experiments you're going to be doing what is your mission and so as students listen to this it's really going to help them Brew on what they're going to be doing for their own project and presentation so okay shifting a little bit um it might sound creepy and I don't mean to be a stalker but I've read a lot about both of you I did see your hike in Ecuador yes I've anyway I'm really impressed by both of you You' both focused on aerospace engineering but it also does seem that the Arts have been Foundation in your life I'd love to discuss steam a little bit just for a few minutes and the impact for you of who you are today so Anna you're a TCU grad majored in math and Spanish and went on for a MERS of Science and biomedical engineering degree at Duke you were also a biomedical flight controller at JSC NASA as we've talked about a little bit you've just supported astronaut living in space as well as medical hardware and software on the ISS your focus was safety and health thank you I've read you've wanted to be an astronaut since you were like nine 10 yes okay but in addition to these amazing things you are also a writer and an author and you have a recent children's book called kisses from space I particularly love that it's about a CL of dragons and I have a feeling that was intentional perhaps about dragons um I think there's something extra special you might be doing with that beautiful children's book on this mission is that true it is true yes so I co-authored a children's story named kisses from space and I wrote it with Carrie Vosk and it is illustrated by Andy Harkness and this story is it's a story about a mama dragon and her journey to space and she shares that story that Journey with her baby dragons back here on Earth and it is the story of the power of love to overcome any distance and this story it is wonderful that it is it has a dragon in the theme um because we are on a on a dragon spacecraft but that Dragon family was actually initially born out of a storyline that my husband and I used to tell our kids as we would me to work every day together and that storyline was a a wonderful connection Point as we were apart during our days and so it became very obvious when I was on this this journey to space the furthest commute I would ever have and the furthest I would ever be away from my kids that it called for a Dragon Story um but the the really fun part and one of the things that I'm really most excited about is the opportunity to read that story to my two kids um they're ages three and six as well as some of the Brave kids of St Jude Children's Research Hospital while we are in space and so I will be reading that and getting to share so cool yeah so I'm really I'm really looking forward to getting to connect with all of those kids from of space Oh my gosh that's the coolest thing thank you um I cannot wait to hear that because I love stories being told to me you do not have to be young to enjoy stories um so Sarah you were raised as a classical violinist you also loved Woodworking and then went on to study aerospace engineering and dance at UC Boulder and are now experienced mission control operator I hear that you might have a new initiative with music and space is that is that correct I do leave maybe you you are absolutely correct you know absolutely um so I'm so excited actually just this week we released a brand new curriculum so just for awareness I was raised as a violinist not an engineer and it wasn't until I met an astronaut for the first time in high school that I changed career paths and started studying engineering instead um so you know kind of inspired by this journey from the Arts to science I wanted to create an educational resource that could be used by kids to pursue their own dreams and figure out what interests them in either science or music or anywhere in between um so I partnered with an organization called elema USA who really is working to ensure that every child has access to high quality music education and for me I have a huge belief that every child can benefit from music education just as I did Growing Up and so you know it doesn't have to be that you want to be a musician it doesn't have to be that you want to be an engineer um but I wanted to provide a resource that kids could use to explore their passions and interests and maybe connect some dots um and so yeah there's this really cool fun um curriculum with lots of Hands-On activities for kids um but just really excited to you know maybe Inspire some different dreams if it's in music or if it's in space but there's a lot of cool projects to find that that's really great and audience if you are a subscriber to us we will have that sent out to you for her music program as well as kisses from space but you can also I am sure find it on the Polaris Dawn website as well there will probably be some links for that correct yeah great definitely just click on the music tab oh well that's really easy so that's good okay so you know our team is a huge supporter of steam the science technology engineering art and math hence our name steam space because we believe it all feeds into each other and in the industry as the space industry grows and we do become Travelers um everyone will be needed for a thriving world so thank you for also incorporating the Arts into who you you are as amazing astronauts today so I think it is time for our student questions I think I hear space dog yep that's definitely space dog okay so one thing that makes our podcast very special is that we invite students to submit questions to our guests um we want to introduce opportunities to students everywhere and show them about engaging in this amazing industry so today we have some fantastic questions for you from sixth graders at Allen Academy under the direction of educator Stephanie Hanover in Brian Texas go Allan Academy go Miss Hanover you guys are amazing so are youall ready for some questions okay okay good all right first question from Alex W what are you most excited or worried about for this Mission ahead who would like to take that amazing Brave question I can takee that one okay um I think for me you know I've spent so so much time training astronauts to go to space and to have an opportunity to actually see this environment for for the first time for myself I'm so excited to see what it is actually like to live and work in microgravity and to do it with this crew you know obviously the spacewalk is a really big objective that we have and we'll be really focused on throughout the entire Mission um but really just looking forward to seeing what the earth looks like from that perspective and what it's like to live in space yeah well I'm excited for you and a little jealous I'm going to admit it Anna do you want to throw in anything that you are particularly excited or maybe worried about for this Mission I think the one of the things I I do a lot of thinking about is how to just make sure we make every minute count you know it's GNA be a fast five days and like Sarah was saying earlier we have a lot we want to accomplish in that time and so just you know similar to Sarah I've spent my most of my career supporting space missions on the ground and and being in awe of them and so thrilled about them and so I I am incredibly grateful for the chance to experience it firsthand and and want to make sure that I learn as much as I can and and soak up as much as I can well very true very true okay from Libby s what are the features of your space suits and what makes them different from ones before well this is a good one Libby maybe I'll jump in on this okay SpaceX has an Iva suit an intervehicular activity suit that they've used for every Mission thus far and it's basically a a safety system that if something were to happen uh in the spacecraft it's you know a life support system for each crew this is the first time that we are designing a suit that's intentionally going out into the vacuum of space and it it is basically a little spaces shift it has to support every crew member inside and that means giving oxygen you know giving you information about your suit pressure controlling your environment so humans can live inside it and so this suit which the SpaceX team has just been doing an incredible job to develop over the last two years um is effectively every single part of it is different than the Iva suit um you know you have to consider joint Mobility you now need to be able to move inside this pressurized volume with relative ease if you need to grab something you want your hand to be there when you need it and you don't have to fight a lot of um suit movement in order to do so um it has all sorts of new added features for thermal protection you know we're going to be exposed to really high and low temperature extremes so there's thermal protection throughout the suit um even in the visor the way it's designed you have to have sun protection it acts as a sunglasses Shield as well as providing thermal protection there's so many different aspects of the suit that are brand new there hasn't been a new space suit for spacewalks developed in a long time I think almost 40 years now and so this is the first time whole new technologies are being added new material development has happened since then so there's all sorts of really cool features that will be going into this but you know you have to think about the whole problem how do you keep four people safe in a a personal spaceship effectively yeah I I'm kind of amazed at how you can create these personal spaceship suits and they're still really stylish to students you should definitely go online and look at these space suits they're amazing okay last question from Carter K I want to know this one too what foods will you be taking for your mission Anna would you mind informing us on the foods we will be watching you in joy on your mission this is the topic that Sarah and I also both love um so basically our our food comes in kind of like two varieties one is we have a a good amount of fresh food that will fly with us that we will eat for the first few days and then after that runs out we will move on to more like camping food um clip things like that one might take camping um so SpaceX came up with a really creative way to provide fresh food from from space they freeze cold brewed coffee and use that as the ice cubes around our fresh food and as those ice cubes melt we get to enjoy some wonderful fresh coffee and our fresh food stays nice and chilled oh amazing oh my yummy I am a huge lover of coffee I think our whole crew is and it will be really special to get to drink some coffee coffee floating in space while looking at our beautiful Earth um and then when it when it comes to just you know the food some of the fresh food will bring is things like fresh pizza and bananas things like that that will be wonderful and and easy to eat while we're up there another another favorite is is Peanut M&M's so getting to to enjoy catching those in space will be will be great yeah I can see that already I I like that visual a lot better than the space sickness I like the peanuts Eminem peanuts in space that that's a great visual with cool space suits love it okay well it has been a fantastic show today um I'm a little bummed because there is so much more I want to talk about um but I just want to thank you both so much for being here to today I know our listeners feel the same way and I will be watching the Polaris Dawn Mission with baited breath it's going to be amazing so many firsts and so much you will be doing on this Mission I mean hats off and I am I am excited and you are being an amazing role model for those who are watching and looking up to you literally before we wrap up shop I want to thank you again is there anything else you would like to say to our young audience or anyone because I know I forget things a lot and I don't want to miss anything I would just say you know really pay attention to what you love and what you are good at and follow that guide as you are figuring out what you want to do with this life it is I think the number one thing to follow is paying attention to those interests and skills and that will will lead you well in life really good advice I'll try to do that [Laughter] too yeah I think also just don't be afraid of dreaming Big Dreams um I don't think either of us could have imagined being here today when we were little girls growing up and so just know that there's so much that's possible and if you are willing to open your mind to Dreaming bigger you never know what's coming um so just dream big yeah dream big you hear that audience dream big thank you ladies again so much what a fantastic show this was today and I can't thank you both enough for being here with us I know our listeners feel the same way and I will continue to follow the Polaris Dawn program and watch the mission with baited breath audience if you liked what you heard and learned about today please consider following us on our cities and space Facebook page as well as our insta at steaming for space and sharing this podcast with your friends and colleagues we also would love to hear from you we want to know how you are using these podcasts in your classroom we are setting up our fall schedule and if you would like to tell us what you would like to learn about please please reach out to us by going to our website at steam-it the contact us button if you would like to support us or be a sponsor please reach out or simply visit our site and hit support us every donation matters and helps us to produce new content and create aligned essential questions and classroom projects you can find them on our website along with our podcast for free you can also subscribe to us on Spotify Google Podcast Addict Amazon and most major platforms special thanks to RN CN Studios for helping us to produce this podcast and thank you to Nate ziven productions for our awesome music That's a Wrap audience our team will be taking a break for the summer here in good old Texas and we will be returning in September with a brand new season full of amazing guests until next time I'm Holly maler keep looking [Music] up I