Ask The Experts: Stories From the Stars: Life Aboard the ISS

Intro acuweather this is Michigan control Houston please call station for a voice check station this is Bernie rander with acuweather how do you hear me we hear you loud and clear how us all right loud and clear you look and sound [Music] [Music] fantastic and welcome to to a very Welcome special edition of ACU weathers ask the experts I'm Bernie raino we go beyond the forecast to give you the how and the why on all of the cool and interesting stuff you've wondered about and wanted to ask in weather Space and Science today's guests are literally out of this world we're taking a trip to the International Space Station about 250 mies above us to talk to NASA astronauts Mike Barrett and Tracy C Dyson according to NASA the ISS launched in 1998 and it orbits the Earth at speeds of up to 177,000 mph thank you for taking your Role as Pilot time Mike and Tracy Mike can you describe this Mission and your role as pilot well it's a good question my role as pilot was on the dragon the little spaceship that brought us up here uh with the crew8 and uh my role was really to back up the commander and to be ready to take control of the vehicle if need be which uh unfortunately from my standpoint uh did not arrive we had a great ride up here it's a great little spaceship but that was our commute to work and really the focus of our mission is here on the ISS and over a period of about six months to conduct the research the the tasks before us to maintain the station upgrade it and to do a few spacewalks so uh it's a very multimedia packed Mission if you will from the rocket Riot up here and descend at the end to the six months of of hard work and and just amazing science in the Role as Flight Engineer middle and Tracy what is your role in the mission um well like the rest I'm a a what is called a flight engineer and my job is to help maintain the space station and to help set up and run experiments uh to um uh talk to the public to um do some of the more critical Dynamic operations like uh capture uh vehicles that come up cargo ships with the robotic arm as well as do space walks uh just a whole host of um Daily Life on the ISS things and Mike how many other people are on the uh how would you how would you each describe daily life on the International Space Station well right now we're sort of in our normal uh crew mode so there's seven Souls up here there are three Russian cosmonauts and four American astronauts and uh there are sort of territories if you will there's Russian modules and US modules Japanese European Italian and it really is an international station with an integrated crew which we really enjoy quite well uh all of us are here really for the same reason and life on board is kind of a mix there's a bit of a routine and about when we go to bed we get up we try to do our exercise for a couple hours plus every day to maintain our bones and muscles but the science and the jobs change every day so today I started my day with about two and a half hours of uh doing human body science doing scans ultrasound scans with investigators on the ground both in Europe and in Canada both of these are folks I knew in the space medical community so it was really quite a delight for me characterizing how the body changes in space with this imagery is one of the great experiments that we get to do up here and I just finished testing an emergency breathing mask and oxygen tank so you never know quite what you're going to do and Tracy you've been Daily Routine in space on three missions now for more than 200 days uh have you developed a daily routine well like Mike said our days are pretty set for us um during the work week where we uh we we get up we have a meeting with the control centers around the world that start our day and then we have a whole series of activities and then um in the middle there like Mike said we work out uh to maintain our bone mass our our muscle mass our flexibility those kinds of things and then um we finish off the afternoon with a whole uh host of different tasks ranging from maintenance of the station to science on board to other operations um proficiencies and things like that um and then we end with another conference with our uh teams on the ground and then we get ready for uh for the evening having dinner together uh getting ready for sleep and um any kind of relaxing that we can do and Mike What led you to become an astronaut we have to ask what led you to become an astronaut well I think my story is similar to uh many hundreds who've gone before me and certainly my office mates I think um like everyone I'm fueled by curiosity and I had a lot of varying interests I really loved astronomy I loved flying I loved oceanography I love photography uh I got a degree in Marine zoology I went to medical school and if you were to look for a place that puts all of those together uh it's it's NASA it's human space flight and I think that's a common story with all of our folks in the office it's an amazing slice of humanity that's just fueled by curiosity and just loving to to learn new things at the same time and bringing a lot of diverse interest to the table they they all intersect with human space flight so I have followed a path of basic science medicine eventually um private flight and then eventually went into space medicine and you can only do that in a very few places in the world one of them is the NASA Johnson Space Center and uh I was available to make the leap to the astronaut core from there and Tracy same question what What events led to you working in space events led to you working in space well um my inspiration came uh when I was in high school and the world was excited about something NASA was doing and that was putting a teacher in space and before then I really hadn't thought much about what astronauts were what they were doing um mainly because um I wasn't around test pilots much in the military so um when it but when a teacher was selected to go into space it got my attention because most of my days in my life was spent with teachers uh teachers uh were the people who ushered me through uh school as well as um coached me in sports and um counseled me and so when a teacher became an astronaut it um it really inspired me to look into NASA and what they were doing and it happened to be uh that they were working on building the space station at the time it was called space station Freedom it was just the United States but then it uh changed and became the International Space Station where you had to um have multiple countries working together different cultures coming together um building a space station in space um and doing all the things that at the time of my at the time uh in my life uh I enjoyed doing working with tools uh working with people and um uh just being physically fit and having that be a part of uh your job and so things like that made me uh pursue the astronaut Corp and then when I was eligible I submitted an application and uh the rest then is just What do you both do for some fun history well certainly sounds like you have a lot the work to do up there but we have to ask what do you both do for some fun well we're chuckling about the things we we're not going to tell you about well one of which is playing with our food which he was mentioning you you can't not play with your food up here and uh we we've learned that we can actually kind of hurl something along a trajectory and then go fetch it ourselves uh you know that it's just indicative of zero gravity it's still so novel you know I I think I've now spent about 250 something days in space and every day I learned something new and wonderful about zero gravity it's magical uh and and frankly um any time you get to look out the window at this incredibly beautiful planet uh that that is just like amazing that's one of our favorite pastimes that always will be and to capture the photographs uh we can otherwise we listen to music we we make things that we can't make anywhere else um we enjoy sometimes calling people unexpected Ed L and try to convince them that yes we really are up on the space station um but really the magic is here it's just something to sa Do you sleep better in space I'm throwing in a little wrinkle I have to ask do you sleep better in the in the uh space station or do you sleep better at home we we'll each answer that um it is a perception of myself and many that you keep a same level of alertness for a little bit less sleep up here and that was certainly true on my first long flight uh and uh once you kind of get back used to it again you you just start not going to feel the weight of your body on a bed or the weight of your head on a pillow you're floating after a little while that just gets to be incredibly Pleasant yeah and the funny thing is you you don't really nod off because nodding off is kind of dependent on gravity pulling your head down and kind of catching yourself that doesn't happen you just kind of drift to sleep uh it's it's really quite wonderful um and I I personally really enjoy my rack time I'm going to let Tracy answer as well yeah what I noticed is that I Me Like Mike was saying I think you can sleep less with the same alertness up here I sleep less but um I sleep deeper I noticed I um I go into a very a deep sleep I'm very comfortable and as Janette one of our other crew mates had said I I heard her say that her dreams were more Vivid and and I have to agree that it just seems like dreams become more Vivid at least that's been my experience so our conversation from space is just getting started up next we're asking about the impact of space travel on the human body that's a really big question with a really big answer coming up Mike Barrett explains the total space travel takes on the body and how to adopt to an out of thisor Lifestyle plus what is it like to walk in space on a professional level it's one of the most rewarding and very challenging parts of our job any astronaut will tell you that um we we spend a lot of effort uh in our training throughout our career uh learning how to do a space walk here what they experience as soon as they step out into the atmosphere you'll also hear how a total solar eclipse looks from the perspective of an astronaut all of that and more when ask the experts continues [Music] and welcome back to acuweather ask the experts I'm Bernie raino let's get back to our conversation with NASA astronauts Mike Barrett and Tracy C Dyson aboard the International Space Station Mike Viewer Question you're a physician as well as an astronaut now we have a viewer question Tom from New York City has this question what is the impact of space travel on the human body well I don't if you can see my fingers but uh this is the thickness of a textbook that I'm the senior author or editor on about space medicine uh and uh let me just tell you that that's a really big question with a really big answer every system in the body changes and uh it's really quite amazing how adaptable we are you know we we start losing bone and muscle mass which we try to counter with exercise uh but we also lose some blood volume we lose blood Mass we lose plasma volume our lungs change shape our heart changes shape the diaphragm moves up the organs move a little bit the immune system changes your sense of balance changes like crazy so cardiovascular regulation I mean basically everything um and and really that's kind of my passion is how we adapt uh to to zero gravity some of most of them are very adaptive some of them are probably less friendly to the human body but it shows the resilience the plasticity of of our bodies and how amazing we really are to to challenge it and put in an environment like this and and we still become really good workers but we're now three-dimensional workers who can function in a very novel gravitational environment uh and bring the human capacity for Creative thought and observation into bear I mean it's really uh an amazing thing so that's that's a really short answer to a really big question but I encourage people to go out and learn more about it and Tracy Research Focus you're uh you are also a chemist uh what is your research focus and what kind of EXP experiments are you doing well I'm not doing any chemistry per se up here um but um what I have been involved in are various uh studies that were developed on the ground um spent a lot of time with biofabrication facility where they're um printing um actual tissues uh samples um of of organs and so U my job is really just to help uh set up the experiments and to um exchange samples and and uh help um uh basically take care of the facility um various other experiments like Mike was mentioning we human subjects for and so we uh um either attach electrodes and and um send signals uh you know down to the ground so they can uh see what kind of changes there are in our body um but also uh donating samples uh to um for later analysis which also by the way utilizes some really interesting um other other facilities like our um minus 80 degree freezer we've got some pretty Hardy freezers um up here on the space station to preserve all this science so that it could make it home for further analysis which I think is um just a testament to what a fantastic laboratory the space station is it's fully equipped with not just novel science but novel support for the science not to mention these gigantic solar rays which are generating a ton of power for running all of these facilities Mike and Tracy Total Solar Eclipse we feature astronomy stories here at acuweather can you describe how the total solar eclipse on April 8th looked sure yeah it was spectacular I'll just start up front with that our Focus was really on the shadow across the ground rather than looking up at the sun our big Windows of observation are really pointing downwards at Earth so that wasn't a view that was that good for us necessarily but the uh Shadow moving so quickly uh across the surface of the Earth just really reminds you that there's planetary neighbors out there uh and that the solar system is so much bigger than the earth uh it was really amazing to see this black what I almost uh consider like a menacing Shadow uh creeping over this beautiful blue and green and brown Earth surface uh at at pretty high speed U we're actually faster than it it was uh moving depending on where it was on the earth a few hundred to over a thousand miles we're going 17,000 mes hour so we overtook it and we saw it best at Eastern Canada we were all crowded up in the Koopa to watch it all four of us uh taking pictures just um kind of given our verbal Impressions to it as well it was just really on inspiring to see Spacewalks speaking of on inspiring Tracy I understand that you've been on three space walks totaling more than 22 hours how would you describe those experiences um in some regards it's very surreal when you think about it that you yourself become a your own satellite and you are um outside the space station in the harshest environment uh almost imaginable and um you're not only alive um and functioning but you're um actually productive and doing something um important for the space station but on a professional level it's one of the most rewarding and very challenging parts of our job any astronaut will tell you that um we we spend a lot of effort uh in our training throughout our career uh learning how to do a space walk and when you actually get to go outside and do one it's uh one of the most rewarding experiences uh in our field and so um when you're out there you almost can't believe what you're doing but also a testament to our training the facility the neutral buyy laboratory where we do our training um or the majority of it um has a replica of the space station underwater and when we come out the hatch um it's it's definitely a different environment outside the space station but the space station itself is very familiar to us as we uh translate around on handrails um we're seeing um very familiar surroundings and that also is a great comfort um but then when you get a very quiescent moment which is also uh brief um out in a spacewalk when you get to look at the beautiful planet and the the stars um if the lights are down low it's um it can take your breath away and it can also take your focus away so um we try to limit those moments so that we stay focused and on the timeline but it can uh it can be some of the most memorable moments of your life we'll have more on our conversation from space with Michael and Tracy just ahead ask the expert returns after a quick break [Music] and welcome back to ACU weather ask the experts I'm Bernie raino let's get back to our conversation with NASA astronauts Mike Barrett and Tracy C Dyson aboard the International Space Station and I Radiation here at ACU whether we're interested in space weather in your ISS environment without atmosphere are there impacts from the changes in the sun's radiation when we're above the Earth's atmosphere um we lose a lot of protection from the atmosphere that Shields us from radiation so I'm I'm showing you a little radiation dosimeter that we all have to carry around continually we're basically like radiation workers in a nuclear power plant or a a hospital uh um so any anytime you're using radiation at a higher dose than normal you carry one of these and we actually get quite a bit higher than in those industries that I mentioned but another big thing is just the effect on our equipment a lot of our electronics are very sensitive to radiation and that includes our cameras anything that has densely packed uh chips basically is going to be vulnerable to radiation and single event upsets where you might actually bit flip a switch or a signal input uh so it's something we deal with every day and it's just something really interesting to us station this is Houston ACR that concludes the event thank you NASA astronauts Michael bar and Tracy C Dyson thank you so much for joining us and sharing your experiences aboard the International Space Station thank you for joining us on ACU weathers ask the experts I'm Bernie raino don't forget when you have a question about weather space or sence you can write us or send us a video question at ask the exerts acuweather.com you can also call us at 888566 666 [Music] thank you to all participants station we are now resuming operational Audio Communications station this is Houston ACR that concludes the event thank you