Sherri: Good afternoon and welcome to Station Update, the news program about the International Space Station just for students. I’m your host, Sherri Jurls, and we’re broadcasting live from the Johnson Space Center here in Houston, Texas.

We’ve got a fun program lined up for you today. So let’s take a look at what’s coming up.

We will explore the International Space Station, what it is and how you and I will benefit from this amazing place in space.

Our roving student reporter will show us the cool experiment of the day, and we’ll talk with our special guest, Sally Davis, about the STS 108 shuttle mission that just returned from the International Space Station yesterday.

And we’ll check out Station Update’s Web site pick of the month. All of this coming up today, but first, what is the International Space Station?

Well, the International Space Station will be the largest research laboratory ever built in space.

We’re calling it the International Space Station because it includes the United States and 15 other countries.

The major partners of the International Space Station are the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, and all of the partners involved in the European Space Agency. Now even though this station is already in space, it’s not completely built yet.

The first module, the [Zaria], was launched from Russia in November of 1998 and the second module, Unity, was launched in December of the same year.

It’s orbiting at approximately 220 miles above the earth, and it’s traveling at 17,500 miles per hour. This station will be completed over the next five years. It’s going to take us about 46 total flights carrying more than a million pounds of hardware up into space to complete the space station.

As you can see here from this animation, we still have a long way to go. It’s really going to be very large. As a matter of fact, when it’s finished being built, it’s going to be more than two American football fields in width. That’s just huge. It’s very hard to imagine how large that’s going to be. But it will be a wonderful space station.

That is just really big, and what’s even more interesting is once we finish building it, it’s going to have an additional operating life of 10 to 15 years. So that means you, as a student watching it today,

could finish school and come to work for NASA and we’d still be working on the International Space Station. Now that would be cool.

For now, we’ll have to depend on our well-trained astronauts to finish building the space station. And they live and they work on board the station, completing our important research, and it helps us improve our lives here on Earth as well. We’re already on our fourth expedition crew of astronauts.

The very first crew, the Expedition 1 crew,

launched in October of 2000, and the commander was Bill Shepherd and there were two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri [Godzinko] and [Sergei Krikelev]. This started a series of continued human presence in space. And the Expedition 1 crew lived on board the station for 138 days.

The second Expedition crew lived on the station 165 days, and the commander was Uri [Usechev]. And the two flight engineers were James [Boss] and Susan Helms.

The third Expedition crew was on orbit 129 days. The ISS commander then was Frank Culbertson, and we had flight engineers Vladimir [Dejerov] and [Mikhail Turin]. They have been working on science on board the station all along.

Now today the Expedition 4 crew is on board. They’ve only been up there 13 days. The commander of the Expedition 4 crew is Uri [Onefrenko]. And the two flight engineers are Dan [Fursh] and Carl [Walz].

Well it’s not time to get your brains in gear. Let’s review today’s station trivia question. Everybody put your thinking caps on.

When the International Space Station is completed, it will be the blank brightest light in the sky: First, second, third, or fifth? So put your thinking caps on and try to come up with an answer. Later on we’re going to have the answer.

But for now, I’d like to welcome our special guest, flight director, Sally Davis. Welcome, Sally.

Sally: Thank you, Sherri.

Sherri: How are you this afternoon? We’re very delighted to have you.

Sally: It’s an honor to be here. Thank you.

Sherri: Well thank you. Would you take a few moments and tell us what you do as a flight director?

Sally: Sure. The flight director is responsible for the execution or

carrying out the real-time operations. Which means we do a little bit of pre-flight planning for about a year, getting ready, we decide what we’re going to do on the flight. We get ready and we train and we make sure we understand all the technical problems and we solve those. And then we sit down once the shuttle lifts off and go make all that happen as planned.

Sherri: Great. Well the International Space Station is a huge project and I know the STS 108 mission just returned, and you served as the lead flight director on that mission. Can you tell us a little bit about what they did on that mission?

Sally: Sure, Sherri. We had, our major objective on the shuttle flight was to take the Expedition 3 crew home, and to bring the Expedition 4 crew up. And we had to take all of their experiments, all their clothes, all their food with them. So we carry a big container in the shuttle cargo bay with us which has all of their provisions that they’ll need for the next five months on orbit.

We attach that to the Space Station, open it up, take all of their belongings out, put all of the Expedition 3’s belongings, which by now are dirty clothes, empty food containers, things like that, experiment samples, and we put those in this module I was talking about which we call the multipurpose logistics module, and of course we have an acronym for it, MPLM. And it’s got-, all our modules have proper names. This one’s called the Raffaello.

Anyway, back to the story. We put all the logistics for the Expedition 3 crew in there. While we’re doing all this loading and unloading, the crews do what we call a handover,

where the Expedition 3 crew, who has already been on orbit, takes the Expedition 4 crew around to all of the systems in the Space Station and they describe how it works and where they’ve stowed the important stuff like the food and the candy, all those kinds of things.

Seriously they spend more time on how the station systems actually work and try to get as much of that done as they can. They also help with packing up and getting the Expedition 3 crew ready to go.

One of the important things that crews do, especially for long duration crews is, it’s important to exercise every day, especially right before the crew comes home and has to readjust to gravity after living in zero gravity for a number of months. So we make sure that the crew that’s coming home gets at least two hours of exercise every day.

A couple of other important parts of the mission were the electrical power system was having a couple of problems that were making it a little more difficult to operate than we really wanted it to, and engineers analyzed the problem for several months and decided that some components of the power system, which were outside, were not keeping in the same temperature. That is, when you’re in darkened space it’s really cold, and when you’re in the Sun it’s really hot. And those temperature variations on this hardware was causing some problems for it.

So what we did is we sent Linda [Godlin] and Dan Tonny, who are two of the shuttle crew members, out for a space walk and they wrapped these components in thermal blankets. And that went very well and people are still off looking at the data to tell us if it really did help the system or not.

In addition to that, there were a couple of systems on the Space Station that needed the parts changed out, just because they were at the end of their life. One of them was the treadmill, which the crew exercises on. I already explained why that’s so important. They had to replace the entire treadmill, and it’s not just your typical treadmill you’d see in a gym, it’s got all kinds of electronics controls on it.

So they had to change that out, and that took quite awhile. It took four hours for three crew members working on it. We were expecting it to take much longer than that. So they, it was a big activity, but they got it done very quickly. And we were really pleased about that.

We also had some power strips that needed to be changed out because of some design errors in them. We changed those all out and managed to unload the station of a lot of extra foam. So it’s been a busy two weeks and now the crew, Expedition 4 crew is busy getting adapted to the station and trying to find out where everything is that they didn’t think about asking the Expedition 3 crew about. So on we go.

Sherri: What’s it like being a part of the flight controller team? Are there any stories that you’d like to share with us that might come to mind about working as a part of that team?

Sally: I’m not sure I can recount any specific stories. One of the best things about working in the space program is the people. It’s not really, the technical challenges are fun, but to be able to work with people and to solve problems and be a part of the team and to have something to show for your work, that’s the best part of the job, I think.

Sherri: Great. Well thanks for sharing that portion of your career with us. It was very interesting.

In just a few minutes we are going to come back and answer your questions live with our guest Sally Davis. But first, let’s go to our cool experiment of the day with our roving student reporter.

Jonathan: ...cool experiment of the day. And wonders how do we measure mask in a microgravity environment?

Scientist: That’s right, Jonathan. On Earth, weight is related to mass. Heavier objects have greater mass.

Jonathan: So on Earth, lighter objects have less mass.

Scientist: Less mass, that’s correct, Jon. And on a scale on Earth, the springs are compressed by the object being measured. The amount of compression tells what the object’s weight is.

Jonathan: In microgravity, scales don’t work. Putting an object on a scale in space will not cause the scale’s spring to compress.

Scientist: So you need to know, do we need to know the weight or the mass of objects in space?

Jonathan: Yes.

Scientist: Yeah we do. We need to measure that mass of the object. So give you a couple of examples here to study some microgravity environments. For example, the life science studies on the nutrition of astronauts in orbit, may require daily measurements of the astronauts’ mass. It also helps us make sure that they’re staying healthy.

Another example is in materials science research. It may be necessary to measure how the mass of a growing crystal changes each day.

Jonathan: So how do we measure the mass of an object without the effects of gravity?

Scientist: Good question. We do it with inertia.

Jonathan: Inertia, well what’s that?

Scientist: Well, inertia is resistance to changes in motion. The more mass an object has, the more inertia it has. And the more force is needed to move it. Now, the device we use to measure inertia and therefore its mass, is the inertia balance. It’s a device that vibrates an object back and fort or up and down to measure its mass.

The fewer vibrations back and forth we see, the more mass an object has.

Jonathan: Or the more vibrations we see, the less mass it has.

Scientist: Absolutely. So on Earth, we need to take a look at how we’re going to do this on Earth to try to mimic what’s happening up there in outer space. So we want to show you how to set up your own inertial balance here on Earth. And here’s the materials you’re going to need to use. Jonathan’s going to show them to you.

You’re going to need a long flexible ruler like Jonathan has here, a piece of wood with a groove cut in it to hold that ruler up. Good. A timing device that has a second hand, or a stopwatch you can use. Some tape, and that tape’s going to be used to hold the next item onto the ruler. You need a 35mm canister, plastic canister. That’s where you’re going to put the tape to attach it to the ruler on the end. Cotton balls, which are going to go inside the canister, so that your weights don’t slosh around and move around.

And for weights, we’re going to use pennies, but you can use pennies or nickels or small washers. Okay, now what we’ve done here, I’ve secretly taken this already and put a certain number of pennies in here, and we’re going to do this in just a second. But Jonathan, let’s see, what do we have here?

We’ve got our own calibration already done. We have a chart that’s already been set up for us that Jonathan’s going to read through here, and we calibrated this from one penny to 10 pennies I believe. And we’re going to kind of let that go back and forth and we’ll see if our graph will tell us what, in mass, how many pennies we have in that particular 35 mm canister.

Okay Jonathan, you’re going to set it in there, make sure we’ve got it up at two, and I’ve got the timing device here. And he’s going to count how many times it cycles through and then we’re going to use the graph to see if we can figure out how many pennies or what the mass is, inside that container.

Okay, we’ve got about four seconds here. Are you ready? Get set, go.

Jonathan: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Scientist: Stop. So how many did you get?

Jonathan: 16.

Scientist: 16, okay, so let’s go ahead and read it through here. 16 was the number of cycles, and you need to go over and take a look and read it down. How many pennies?

Jonathan: Seven.

Scientist: All right, let’s see if we’ve got that, if this has got seven pennies in here. So I’m going to open this up, take out the cotton, and we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Good shot, perfect, perfect. Now that’s how we measure mass with inertia in space.

Okay, now thank you very much. We wanted to see if you could try this at home. So take a look and we have a Web site that we’ll give to you later. All you need is that flexible ruler, 35 mm canister, some pennies or weights, a piece of wood with a groove in it, and some cotton to keep it from sloshing around. Now, we want you to try this at home and see if you can observe the same kind of things that we did here. You’re going to have to calibrate your graph of course, going from one to 10 pennies.

Now, we wanted to send this back to Sherri for some other cool things on the Station Update. Sherri, back to you.

Sherri: Thanks, [inaudible]. And we do have some video as a further demonstration of that concept that I’m really interested in seeing it.

Well we must be having a little bit of a technical difficulty. We’ll get that out here in just a moment. But in the meantime, oh here we go.

Oh, so sorry about that. We are experiencing technical difficulties, but onward we move. Well we have our wonderful guest, Sally Davis, who’s a flight director with us for those of you just joining in. We are broadcasting live from Johnson Space Center and we are now going to be answering your questions live. So let’s see what you’ve sent into the chat room. And if you haven’t sent anything yet, do submit those and we’ll see how many of your questions we can answer today.

The first question Sally is from John, and he would like to know how does gravity affect things in space?

Sally: Well, we call it weightlessness, but it’s really things are free-floating without bounds, so an object doesn’t necessarily-, the crews frequently tell us you let go of a pen and it stays there except the air flow inside the module will send it off some other place. So unless something’s attached, you have to go to the fan, the inlet to the fan,

where the fan gets its air from and go find whatever it is you put away for a second.

The other kind of thing that we see a lot is for things that you take for granted, in exercising -- the crew does a lot of exercising -- we have to actually attach them to whatever they’re exercising on. If they’re on a treadmill, they actually have to be bungied down to the treadmill so they can get some good out of it.

We have a weight-lifting machine which is really not weights that you lift because they don’t weigh anything and that wouldn’t help your muscles at all. So we have a resistive exercise kind of thing.

Probably the most significant effect on zero gravity however is what it does to the human body. Your bones figure out, apparently fairly quickly, that they’re not needed to support as heavy a structure, so they quit producing new bone plasma and get very, very light, which can be a bit of a problem once you get back to Earth.

And we also have seen crews, fluid floats up to their face and they look like they’re all swollen up or something like that. It has unique effects on everything. The food they eat, the liquids they drink, we all have to take that into account because in zero gravity it just doesn’t act the same. So the simplest task on Earth becomes a completely different challenge once you get into space, because of lack of gravity.

Sherri: Well we have received another question from Ryan who would like to know if the STS 108 crew members actually did any work on board the International Space Station while they were up there?

Sally: Absolutely, Sherri. We rely on every single crew member to do their part. There were 10 crew members during the flight. The three on the Expedition 3 crew, the three on the Expedition 4 crew who stayed in space and the four shuttle crew members. Everybody contributed to getting the Expedition 4 crew settled in, and they did that by unpacking this module I talked about earlier.

They also helped us, we dumped a lot of water that’s generated on board the space station and the space shuttle overboard,

and because we don’t need the water for anything and the volume it’s stored in just actually takes up space.

I also mentioned that [one of the guys ... Dan Tonny] did the space walk for us. They were shuttle crew members and they helped us out a lot. They were working on Space Station hardware, but whenever you need help, you’re not too picky about who actually does it. And did a lot of helping us get the logistics all settled in for the new crew, and making the old crew, the Expedition 3 crew at home in the shuttle, so they’d be ready for their ride home.

Sherri: Now I know that Linda did a space walk that helped deploy a project called Starshine. Can you tell us about that a little bit?

Sally: Yes, the Starshine, I’m not sure anybody knows what a disco ball is anymore,

but being a child of the ‘70’s that’s what I call it. The Starshine is a big ball with basically little pieces of glass all over it, which makes it highly reflective and easy to track.

As I understand it, this experiment helps, is for students to track and be able to see through different-, with their eye or with telescopes or whatever, you see that on the monitor, it’s a little ball up there by the shuttle tail where we deploy that. Be able to track that and understand how orbital mechanics work.

And what I mean by that is as objects orbit the Earth, they become under the influence of gravity from the Earth and change their orbit in certain ways. And the students who are tracking this would be able to tell what the altitude of the orbit is. In addition, they would be able to tell, okay, if it’s at this altitude, it’s 200 miles above the Earth. We expect it to come over the horizon where we are at 6:07 this evening, and we’ll be able to see it for five minutes. Those kinds of things.

I’m not sure if there are other additional experiments associated with Starshine. The orbital mechanics happens to be my favorite part of the experiment because that’s my background. Before I was a flight director I worked in orbital mechanics.

Sherri: Oh, very interesting. Well thank you for explaining that to us. Well Mason wants to know if students can fly on the ISS?

Sally: Not yet. Young people, if you aspire to be an astronaut, you can certainly go through the process of getting selected with that. Right now we don’t have any plans to fly any students, but I sure think, my hope is that we can offer space flight to as many people as are interested in it.

Sherri: Well let’s talk about that a little bit, Sally, about the process of how students become an astronaut.

Do they have to got to college, what kinds of things do they need to do?

Sally: Right now the selection for true astronauts, at least in the United States is going to college is a must. You have to have a technical degree. You have to have a bachelors degree which is the very first degree that you receive when you go to college. Almost everybody in the astronaut selection process has an advanced degree however. We do have some people with just a bachelors degree, but almost without exception they have masters degrees or Ph.D.s in some specialty.

How I would characterize the rest of the follow-on to that is not only school, but decide what you want to do, and do it well, whether it’s flying airplanes, whether it’s working in a laboratory doing developmental scientific work, whatever you decide you want to do with your life, go do it and do it well. That will put you in the best position for that.

Then of course there’s the application process and the interview process and the physical testing process. To go through that, interviews. They’re looking for people who are willing to be a part of a team, willing to take some amount of personal risk and sacrifice in order to do what the Space Program thinks is what we should be doing. So it’s a fairly long, involved process.

And I never, when I’m talking to people about being an astronaut, I give my long speech about how long it takes to be prepared for it. But I also always add that it’s unlikely when you’re an astronaut that you’re going to be doing that for the rest of your life. You do something and do it well before hand, you’ll be an astronaut, and that usually is a career with limited number of years in it. And then you do something else.

So plan your life accordingly. If you’re thinking about being an astronaut, figure out what else you want to do with your life because you’ll probably get the opportunity to do all of those things.

Sherri: Great. Well Kayla writes in and would like to know what part of the Space Station we’re working on right now? Obviously there are a lot of pieces and we have only just begun in 1998 sending the pieces up. Where are we right now?

Sally: I don’t know if you can see the model behind me, but the big white parts that you see are the pressurized modules and those are the parts that the astronauts actually live inside. The other aspects of it are this truss that’s going across here. And that’s what we call the power truss which will generate electricity for all of these modules here, so we can run [on electrical powers] and most important system on the Space Station. If you don’t have power, you don’t have a Space Station.

So starting in March we will start-, we’ve put several of these pressurized modules up. It’s the largest habitable volume that people have lived in in space. It’s not as big as it’s going to be, but next we’ll start working on the truss so we can build out the solar arrays that you see there, in March.

Sherri: Great. Well we certainly still have a long way to go but it’s very exciting piece by piece. Thank you Kayla for that question. Maggie would like to know who decided to build the International Space Station?

Sally: The Space Station concept has been around for a very long time, and we actually had another space station in the late ‘70s called Sky Lab. We had three crews of three crew members each living on that for about a year-and-a-half or two years. The Russians have also had a series of space stations over the years and I don’t remember the names of all of them, but there have been a lot of them.

So the idea of a space station has been around for a long time. As far as the International Space Station goes, the idea on the Space Program is we see it as the next logical step, a space station where you can figure out what the long-term effects on life are, how people adjust to living in space, how systems behave. And we have to do that-, I heard an analogy one time, it’s like setting the tent up in your own backyard before you go camping.

We’re not satisfied to just stay on the Earth, we want to explore other planets if we can and maybe some day in the future leave the solar system and explore other planets outside our solar system. The Space Station is the first step in moving along that vision.

Sherri: Great. Ryan writes in and wants to know how large is the ISS? Now we talked about that a little bit earlier, but we can visualize it again. And how much power do the solar panels produce? Does it produce all the power for this station or are there other backup systems?

Sally: I’m terrible at remembering numbers so I don’t want to mess this up. They produce-, we rely on the solar array to generate every bit of electricity, but it also serves to-, it sends the power to the systems that need it at the time it’s being generated, but it’s also charging batteries. So when the solar arrays are not generating electricity, we can switch over to battery power and the systems will make that change just fine and so it works great.

Sherri: And again, this is how large it’s going to be. The whole two football fields wide side by side. That’s just really hard to fathom, and no wonder we can’t build it on Earth and launch it. We’d never get it off the ground.

Sally: We’ve had numerous crews who are accustomed to flying in the shuttle, come up to the station. Even though it’s not its full finished size now, and the first thing they say is, "Oh my gosh, it’s so big." And it is. It’s a big piece of metal up there.

Sherri: Bill writes in and would like to know how long it will take for the current Space Station occupants to feel normal after they come back to Earth in six months? And I think actually the Expedition 4 crew is planning on being up about five months.

Sally: That’s right.

Sherri: But still, how are they going to feel and how long will it take them to feel normal when they return?

Sally: I think the adaptation to the ground doesn’t take all that long. I’ve heard some stories from astronauts and cosmonauts that said to feel completely 100% back to how you felt before you were up there takes as long a you were in space. So if you were up there for five months, after about five months on Earth, you’d feel like you were completely back to normal. But that’s a gradual process.

You get your bearings, you’re able to walk, start exercising, those kinds of things, a little bit at a time, and that happens within a couple of weeks.

Sherri: Wow. Well that’s really a short period of time. I would have thought it would have been even longer than that when they’re being so accustomed to microgravity over many, many months. That’s pretty amazing. I bet they’re all fit in the first place to have such a quick recovery.

Sally: Yes, they do spend a lot of time paying attention to their physical fitness, especially the exercise.

Sherri: Okay, Jason, you write in and wanting to know when we finish the Space Station in about five years, how many people we will be able to fit in it?

Sally: Ideally, the Space Station will hold six people at a time for extended periods of time. Of course more people will fit in it. We can put probably a couple of shuttle crew member’s worth in there. But the important thing is that for long periods of time, the environmental systems and the power systems and all the systems have to be able to support a sustained level of crew membership. And right now that’s six or seven people.

The other important aspect of how many people can be on the space station when the shuttle is not there, is how many people could we bring safely home in an emergency. And we have, right now we use the Soyuz, which is a Russian vehicle, and it holds three people. So if we’re having six people up there, we’d need two Soyuz’s docked so that they could come home in an emergency.

Later on, we’re hoping to add the crew return vehicle, which is a new vehicle that’s under development and testing and some of you may have actually been watching its activities. It actually did a drop and landing test in the middle of [STS 100A]. Very interesting. It will hold seven crew members.

So hopefully sometime down the road, we’ll have a crew return vehicle and we’ll have seven people on orbit and we’ll be able to do a lot more science. A lot of good things happen with seven people on board the Space Station,

and it will keep those of us on the ground very busy also. We’re seeing a picture now of the crew return vehicle.

Sherri: It’s hard to get a gauge of size from this, but I know up to seven astronauts will fit in here, but like sardines, so this is really a very tiny aircraft.

Sally: Yes, it actually fits inside the shuttle payload bay.

Sherri: Oh my goodness.

Sally: It’s about 15 feet across and I’m not sure exactly how long, 20 feet or so.

Sherri: Oh wow. They must really be packed in there like sardines.

Sally: They’re used to that.

Sherri: Well Ross writes in and this isn’t exactly a question, but he writes in from England watching with Paul, and they say they’re watching the broadcast and the whole thing just blows their mind. It’s very addictive to watch the Space Program information and these live scenes are some of the most awe-inspiring images they’ve seen. They wish to say hello to everyone on board and here at NASA and wish us all a happy holiday.

Sally: Thank you. We’ll pass along your hello to the crew next time we talk to them.

Sherri: Thanks, Ross and Paul. We have another Ryan who writes in who’d like to know what kind of studies and experiments in general are going on on the ISS right now?

Sally: I don’t know the particulars of the science because I try to keep the main systems running. But I do know we have plant growth experiments, we have cell growth experiments, people watch the study of cells. I’m not exactly sure what kind of cells. We also have some experiments on the Russian segment that involve children. We have experiments where the crew looks out the window and takes photography and brings it back and people look at the photography and can tell things about life in the sea, plankton, the coloration of different parts of the sea, based on the life that’s there.

Sherri: Okay great. Well for those of you just joining us, we are broadcasting live from the Johnson Space Center and flight director Sally Davis is our special guest and is answering your questions live. If you would like to submit a question for Sally to answer, you can visit the Quest Web site to submit your questions into the chat room. We are receiving those here live and turning them right around and answering right back at you. So send those questions on in.

Let’s continue on. Ann would like to know, when you become a flight director, do you have to learn all of the other flight controller positions first?

Sally: No. The job of a flight director is like being a conductor of a band or orchestra. You don’t have to know how to play every instrument, but you do have to know whether it’s being played correctly or not. We do know a little bit about the systems, but in a typical team, no one person can know everything. So we divide everything up. We have a person who understands the electrical systems, we have a person who understands mechanical systems. We have a person who plans the crew’s day, and that’s their entire job, and it’s a fairly involved and complex thing to plan someone’s day.

So our job is to take the inputs from all of those people who are the specialists, put them together, and come up with a plan of action, run that back by all those people to make sure they agree that what they told us is still satisfying the proper management of their system and come up with a solution to whatever the challenge was for us.

Sherri: Great. Well here’s a personal question for you. Jarred wants to know if you ever want to fly up in space?

Sally: I don’t think I have the temperament to be an astronaut. I do think it would be really fun to fly in space, however. So if there’s ever travel in space for fun, I’d be the first in line.

Sherri: Well it’s have to second that notion. I do think that it would be a lot of fun. Not sure if I’d be the right person or not, but I agree with you.

This is just beautiful footage. Can you imagine just launching in the space shuttle and cruising on up into orbit? I know the human body just experiences a wide range of feelings going through this whole process. But how spectacular it is. Have you ever seen a launch and were you really impacted by that, Sally?

Sally: Yes, I saw one launch, after working here for 21 years. I saw the launch of STS 54. It was a standard mission to deploy a communication satellite, that which we have done so many times. But because it was the one and only time I’ve seen a launch, it was just, it was amazing the feel of power being right there. And the solid rocket boosters are so bright. It’s the brightest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s brighter than the Sun bright.

Sherri: Wow. Okay, Jay writes in and wants to know as the flight director, are you the one who talks with the astronauts up in space?

Sally: I can as a flight director, but that’s not my job. We have a different person in the control center called the capsule communicator whose responsibility it is to talk to the crew. And the way it works in operations, I’ll be discussing things with my team, we’ll come to some conclusion or find the answer to a question that the crew asked, and I will turn what they said into words that we can say to the crew, and I’ll tell the Cap Com, "Cap Com, tell them this." And that’s what they do.

Almost without exception the Cap Coms are astronauts. Sometimes they’ve flown, sometimes they’re rookies or haven’t flown at all. But they help us to phrase things so that they’re understandable from a crew perspective.

Sherri: Right. Well Virginia writes in and would like to know how you train your astronauts for them to go space walking.

Sally: We use a gigantic pool, you see pictures of it there, I hope they have some pictures.

It’s called the neutral buoyancy lab. It’s huge, I don’t know the exact dimensions of it. Again those numbers. Anyway, it’s filled with water and we have full-sized mockups or they look exactly like the outside of the Space Station.

So the crews will get in these suits that are almost identical to the suits they use during a space walk. And they have all the tools there and the-, whatever connections they have that they have to make or if they’re replacing a piece of equipment, they’ll have one that looks just like it. And they go through the whole scenario.

You also see in the picture a lot of other people who look like scuba divers, and that’s what they are. We want to make sure that the crew has as much help as they need, and getting tools and so forth while they’re in the pool or if their suit malfunctions, we can get them out of there and make sure they’re safe.

We have people that are, hold light so we have the right amount of lighting on whatever the work site is. People taking pictures. It involves a lot of people

and you can actually go into see the neutral buoyancy lab if you come to visit the Johnson Space Center. And if you’re lucky enough to be there while they’re actually using the neutral buoyancy lab, you’ll see this-, it looks like an anthill around the work site. There are a lot of people down there in the water helping the crew learn how to do whatever the task is.

Sherri: Well I understand the footage we were just watching was live footage of astronauts training right now straight from the NBL, so that was pretty neat that we had the opportunity to see astronauts training as we speak.

Sally: We do a lot of-, most of the assembly sequence requires that astronauts do space walks. So the neutral buoyancy lab is busy almost every day of the week. It’s a great time to come and visit it, because you will most likely see some kind of activity there.

Sherri: Well have you ever been to Russia or had any training over in Russia?

Sally: Yes, I’ve visited Russia somewhere between 10 and a dozen times. It’s an amazing place. My first visit there was in 1992, right after we first decided, right after the fall of the Soviet Union and we decided to pool our efforts in space, and it’s changed so much since-, from being a communist country to being a free country, more westernized. But what is amazing to me is the people that work in their space program are so much like us, when it comes to doing the job.

The engineering processes are the same, the commitment of the workforce is the same, the way we solve problems and work in a team is the same. Even though our language and culture are very different, and it’s been a real broadening of my horizon to be able to go to Moscow and parts around there and see the history, learn the culture, get to know people from a completely different part of the world.

Sherri: Have you ever sat inside of the Russian Soyuz capsule? Could you give us an idea of how small it really is? We were talking about that earlier.

Sally: The Soyuz vehicle, I’ve not been in a real Soyuz vehicle that is-, yeah you can see there on the monitor. I haven’t been in a flight article that is going into space.

I have been in several of them that have already been in space, and they are tiny. It’s like hunkering down. I don’t know, it’s like sitting in a car seat, a grown-up sitting in a car seat.

And that’s mostly for launch and entry. The crews actually don’t spend a lot of time inside the Soyuz vehicle, and part of the reason it’s scrunched up is part the design. But it’s also the best way to keep them safe while they’re launching to the Space Station or coming home from it.

Sherri: Well Brian you’re wanting to know from Sally’s experiences in Russia if you feel that the general public in Russia feels any sense of ownership of the ISS like they did with the MIR?

Sally: I think the short answer to that question is no. It would be hard if you were a partner in something to feel as much an ownership of it as if you held the-, you owned the whole thing and you had owned it and you were in charge of it. But to some extent, we feel that on our part too.

We own the shuttle and we tell people this is how we’re going to do business on it. So flying the International Space Station, even though the United States is what you would call the lead country in that, we still have to share our decisions and the things that affect us with all of our international partners. So it helps us be a little bit empathetic to what the Russians are going through on the Space Station.

And one of the most gratifying things to me is that the working group level where we are, it doesn’t really matter where you come from or what kind of badge you wear, solving a technical problem is the most important thing to do and you do that without boundaries.

Sherri: Okay, Tom writes in and wants to know if we’re behind schedule in the construction of the ISS, and if so, how far behind?

Sally: Well, it depends on what calendar you’re looking at. We did start late. The construction has begun to take longer from the start for numerous reasons, but right now we’re in the spot in the Space Station assembly where we’re going as fast as we can. We had an incredible year. We went from a Space Station that was 60 feet long to one that is much longer, it holds three people, 365 days a year.

We’ve had a huge increase in the last year, of amount of hardware on orbit. And the upcoming year, as we build out this power tress I was talking about, we’re going to have another phenomenal year where we’re going to be adding parts, adding size, adding weight to the Space Station, almost every month.

Sherri: Wow.

Sally: That’s what the Space Station looked like a year ago. Yeah, they’re showing you all the rest of the parts there. We added all of that hardware in the last year and the parts that are popping up now are what are in store for us over the next year or two years.

Sherri: That’s amazing. I know we have a flight schedule out to the year 2006 or something like that, so we still have a ways to go.

Sally: And not only assembling the Space Station, but we’ll be operating it and people will still be living inside it, conducting experiments and other science, and learning to live in space, all of which were the objectives of having a Space Station.

Sherri: Well Ryan would like to know if you ever went to space camp as a kid and what kind of college classes you need to take if you want to be a flight director?

Sally: Ryan, I wish that they had space camp when I was a kid. My only exposure to space was watching it on TV. In 1969, I was 11 years old so I guess I’d be what fourth or fifth grade. And all we got exposure to space was what we saw on TV. I recommend if you’re interested in space that you go to Space Camp, not only to help you along, but to help you figure out if that’s really what you’re interested in. And get as much exposure to science, mathematics, the space program, flying aircraft, anything that you can think of that’s technically related.

Go explore it, not only because you’re interested in it, but to make sure you really want to do that every day of your life for the rest of your life. And I think kids today, (sorry to sound like an old fogy), you have tremendous opportunities to know more, to be able to participate in things that will help you if you’re really interested in being in space.

As far as classes to take to be a flight director, it’s not really classes. The typical way you become a flight director is to come to work at the Johnson Space Center and work in operations on those consoles that you see on TV, the people that sit there and they look like they’re not doing anything except sitting there watching TV, they’re actually managing their systems in operations.

And to do that well, and then you go through a selection process for flight director. And the kinds of things they’re looking for, for flight directors is ability to understand technical concepts and problem solving, teamwork, leadership, and one of the most important is to be able to communicate effectively with your team and with people outside your team so people understand what you’re trying to accomplish and why.

Sherri: Well that’s an interesting point that you bring up, teamwork. But it really goes beyond when we’re talking about the International partner, then Natalie writes in specifically if it’s a challenge with the language barriers with all the different partners working together on the ISS program?

Sally: The language barriers, and not only language, but cultural barriers are there. We do what we can to overcome them because we all have a common goal, and that’s to fly the International Space Station safely and to keep the crew safe. So overcoming those barriers is the easy part.

Sherri: Great. Well let’s see. We have another question about astronauts and becoming an astronaut and what kind of physical conditioning is required to become an astronaut?

Sally: I don’t know the details of exactly what the parameters are. I think it’s, in general, the kinds of things you can’t have a heart problem, things like diabetes or some other diseases that might cause you to temporarily lose your cognitive skills, because that can be very dangerous in a space environment.

There are no-, as far as I know, there are no requirements that say you have to be in excellent physical condition

and lift weights every day and run five miles in 30 minutes or anything like that. But I believe the tendency is in astronauts, before they are selected and certainly after, is to maintain physical fitness. And that’s something that not only astronauts should do, but we should all do that, because it helps you manage your stress, it keeps you more alert when you are on the job, and helps you live a longer, healthier life.

So I don’t know that there’s a huge difference between the way these guys pay attention to their physical health and how we all ought to do.

Sherri: Right. Well Zachary wants to know if the astronauts eat special food up there?

Sally: They have regular food, except it doesn’t look regular. It’s been dehydrated or rehydrated, things like that.

They may be working on coming up with something. You can tell what it is and especially if you read the label.

Sherri: Well as a matter of fact, I have a couple of examples of food. This is a whole tray full of various kinds of food that the astronauts eat. This blue metal tray and you notice that none of the food’s falling off. All these packets of food have Velcro pieces on them. Obviously when they sit down to eat, they don’t want their food floating away, so that’s just one handy little trick they use in overcoming the microgravity up in space.

Sally: Want me to hold it on this camera so they can see it?

Sherri: Sure.

Sally: And you can see here, I don’t know if you can see this or not. Oops. That’s a drink bag, sorry. These are M&Ms, they don’t do anything to M&Ms. You can eat those in zero gravity just like you eat them on Earth, except they play with them a lot more. They throw them up and throw them in their mouth and things like that.

Sherri: Now what’s this yellow glob right here? Looks to me like-, oh there’s a label on it. It say scrambled eggs. That doesn’t quite look like the scrambled eggs you and I eat. Hmm. But it’s dehydrated, I can see and I guess they do that so that it will last a long time.

Sally: Yes. And then they’ll squirt hot water in this or heat it up and they have an oven. I believe it’s a convection oven, that will heat it up.

Sherri: Right.

Sally: And I understand from crews, these people are very pampered. This food is really actually very good.

Sherri: And nutritional.

Sally: Of course. They do get to pick their own menus day by day. But I’m sure they get some guidance from the nutritionist here at NASA.

Sherri: Now at looking at all of these items of food, they all have big labels on them, just like we would label our contents if we were going to camp. And we were talking about language earlier. They’re all labeled in English and Russian, so I guess that’s one of the ways that we try to accommodate the language barriers that we do have onboard the Station.

Now do they speak all different languages on the Station or it primarily Russian or what is it?

Sally: The primary languages that we use are English and Russian. We have had other people on board, for instance if a French astronaut were on board

and he were doing a public affairs interview with a French journalist, they would probably speak French. But if a Frenchman is talking to us, in Houston, or the Russians in Moscow, they would have to speak English or Russian respectively.

We have a lot of people on the Space Station who know more than one language, and all the Americans who fly on Space Station try to learn Russian, and the Russians go through some language training in English also. But it’s like any other time, if English is your first language, you’re most comfortable speaking English, even though you can speak Russian, you could probably get your point across more clearly, especially if you’re talking about something that’s fairly detailed technical, in your own first language.

Sherri: Oh, I definitely agree. I remember taking foreign language class in school, but even though I can get by in it, I’m still much more comfortable speaking English, which is my first language.

Sally: And that’s even more true if it’s your technical area of expertise.

We use acronyms, we use abbreviations, we use slang and all of those are not as accessible to you in a second language.

Sherri: Well let’s take a moment now and review the Station Trivia Question for all of you guys out there who thought you knew the answer. Let’s review it again.

When the International Space Station is completed, it will be the second-brightest-, it will be the blank-widest object in the sky? And I just gave you the answer. It’s the second brightest.

We had given you the choices of first, second, third or fifth. And that’s amazing to me that we won’t need a telescope to see it.

It’s going to be the second-brightest object in the sky. I just can’t imagine, I’m so excited and I can’t wait for that to happen. I want to watch it flying overhead my backyard.

Sally: Actually you can see it now. And if you go to the Web site that tells you when it’s going to be passing over Houston, you can see it now. And they have several-, I don’t know if it’s a hundred or 200, they have several locations at the Web site where you can go and find out when you can see the Space Station overhead.

And in the winter, you can usually see it around sunset or sunrise. The winter is the best time because you don’t have to stay up late or get up early to watch. So if you’re interested in seeing it now, it looks like a less-bright star,

and it will become brighter and brighter as it becomes bigger and bigger.

Sherri: Okay, well the Web site that you were talking about is spaceflight.nasa.gov. For all of you out there, get your pencils. There’s no www, it’s just spaceflight.nasa.gov and you can see it there on your monitor. And when you click on that Web site, there will be an opportunity for you to click on real-time data and then orbital sightings. And that will take you right to the flight path in the future of whenever the shuttle’s up and of course always, the Space Station, so you can see the next time it’s going to fly over your back yard.

Sally: And that data changes every week. So if you go to your town and you see no sightings available, that means no sightings available this week. Check it next week.

Sherri: Well Sally, it was certainly a pleasure for you to visit with us today and answer all of our questions. There were great questions from you guys out there. We really appreciate you coming. Do you have any closing words before you leave today?

Sally: No, except to say I think this is a great opportunity for people who are in school to explore their interests in the space flight, and you should feel fortunate that you have that opportunity. But it’s more important that you take advantage of all of the opportunity that’s out there. Space flight is a really fun, interesting, challenging, and rewarding job.

I highly recommend it whether you fly in space or not. It’s really a fun thing to do, and I highly recommend it.

Sherri: Okay, thank you so much, Sally. Well here’s our Web site pick of the month. Get your pencils ready. We’re going to write that down.

Endeavor’s crew, as we talked about early, deployed the small satellite called Starshine 2 from a canister located in the payload bay, and they did that on Sunday. And more than 30,000 students from 660 schools in 26 different countries will track Starshine 2 as it orbits the Earth for about eight months.

The students who helped polish Starshine’s 845 mirrors will use the information they collect to calculate the density of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. And to read more about this project and see how you and your school can participate, you can visit the Starshine Web site which we popped up there for you a moment ago. It’s www.azinet.com/starshine, and you got just a little visual there of what that looks like, so you know what to expect.

Well, Jonathan, what did you think of today’s program?

Jonathan: I thought it was really interesting. I love learning about space and everything in it, and it was a lot of fun.

Sherri: Well we enjoyed having the cool experiment of the day. I learned a lot about inertial balance that I did not know before, and we hope all of you out there learned something fun and exciting as well. Unfortunately, we are out of time today here at Johnson Space Center. On behalf of the Distance Learning Outpost and Quest, at Ames Research Center, we hope that you have a very happy holidays.

Thank you for joining us and this is the Quest Web site to see when our next Station News Update broadcast will be coming to you. Bye-bye.