ESA Astronaut Discusses Life in Space with European Museums – Vol 2

0:21 Speaker 1: U h.

1:00 Speaker 2: H one two.

1:28 Speaker 1: Station.

1:28 Speaker 3: This is Houston. Are you ready for the event, Houston. This is station. I am ready for the event. To Louse.

1:39 Speaker 4: This is Mission control Houston.

1:41 Speaker 1: Please call station for a voice check station.

1:44 Speaker 5: This is to Lose. How do you hear me?

1:51 Speaker 3: Tuluse from station? I hear you loud and clear. How about me.

2:00 Speaker 5: Perfect?

2:03 Speaker 6: Thank you very much Sophie for agreeing to discuss today with four European science museums. Yeah, the first one is seated less pass you know it's here. But we have also guys from Pavio do Conesimiento in Lisbon, people from Universum in Bremen in Germany, and we have also people from Eureka Science Center in Helsinki in Finland, and our many visitors this summer have lots of questions for you.

2:46 Speaker 4: Okay, thank you very much all of the four European museums.

2:50 Speaker 3: I'm so happy to talk to you today.

2:52 Speaker 4: You know, when I was a little girl, I was visiting these science museums all the time. I love it that you organized this event and to all the visitors.

3:06 Speaker 5: Okay, so maybe we begin the question.

3:09 Speaker 6: The first one comes from a meal from to Louse.

3:18 Speaker 5: In the French, do you have.

3:21 Speaker 1: To celebrated your birthday? And Lord said a few days ago, how was it? Good morning and Mela, good morning to Loos and depepidly fast that I will remember this birthday all my life. It was great. I wis a lot of presents and mesty from the Grand Key, from my friends and family and from the truth here. The prow were great. They made a birthday cake from me. For me, I blew a four candle and know the pose candle called that. I had a lot of friends and I even received the message on the lessing systems.

4:14 Speaker 1: So a lot of people.

4:17 Speaker 6: From Aelio, from Bremen. Did you sleep well last night?

4:28 Speaker 4: Hello Arelio and hello Bremen in Germany and Science Museum in Germany.

4:34 Speaker 3: So yeah, I slept really well. You know in space. Since I've been here, I've been sleeping so well.

4:40 Speaker 4: So the way I sleep is we have small crowk quaters that are like very small, and inside we have a sleeping bag that is attached to the wall.

4:52 Speaker 3: So it's as if for me, as if I was sleeping like this attached to the wall, and it works well.

4:59 Speaker 4: Actually you know, it's uh, the body is tired and that the mind knows that it needs to go to sleep, and so it just happens naturally.

5:11 Speaker 6: Okay, we have students from the Escola Castelo Branco in Portugal.

5:18 Speaker 5: They want to know.

5:21 Speaker 6: What advice would you give to young women and girls who wish to pursue careers in stem fields.

5:34 Speaker 3: Hello Portugal, and hello for Thank you very much for this question.

5:37 Speaker 4: I would say to all of you girls or anyone who want to pursue in stem fields, go for it.

5:44 Speaker 3: Don't even ask yourself a question, Oh, is it good for me? Is it whatever?

5:48 Speaker 4: If you want to go, go It's amazing. It's a great environment to work in.

5:54 Speaker 3: People. What I love in this environment is.

5:57 Speaker 4: That people are really passionate about their job, and so when you arrive at work, you just have the feeling to arrive to and work with a group of people who are really happy to go to work, and it doesn't feel like work because everyone is happy and everyone loves their job.

6:13 Speaker 3: And this I really love about this. So if you're hesitating just because you are putting self limits or self barriers, just forget about those. Go for it, and I promised you will enjoy it so much.

6:31 Speaker 5: Thank you.

6:31 Speaker 6: Now we go to Sinky with a question from Onto what food can be brought to the iss.

6:45 Speaker 3: Wow, that I love this question. That's a very interesting question, thank you very much.

6:49 Speaker 4: So actually we eat very well in the as there is a great variety. You know, there are nutritionists that work for the food labs and the different space agencies. The main one is in Houston at NASA, and they do select everything so that we have good variety but also nutritional quality so that we can reach high performance being well nourished in here. So there's enough food, enough variety. The things that we cannot bring up here is the thing that do crumbs, the little crumbs, because they would just you know, on Earth, what do you do after a meal, You just clean the table and remove the crumbs on the table and clean the floor.

7:31 Speaker 4: In here, it would not happen because all the crumbs would go everywhere in three dimension, fly everywhere and with the risk of us catching this into our eyes or breathing it. So we don't want crumbs in here. So basically the food is already prepared and very carefully prepared and sent up so that it arrives here with no crumbs. But yeah, as a French person, you know, we don't have bread in here.

7:57 Speaker 3: Well, we have.

7:58 Speaker 4: Substitutes of bread. It's an example of food that we cannot bring. But all the rest are fine and very good food.

8:08 Speaker 5: Okay, So now we come back to Toulouse.

8:12 Speaker 6: Korally is the nine million visitor to the seated less pass and.

8:19 Speaker 5: She wanted to ask you this question. Come on, vitular p.

8:25 Speaker 1: How do you go living in close with your fellow astronauts after thank you for this question. It's a very good question, and indeither it all goes down well. We are working together. Of course, we didn't know each other before this space adventure where we trained there for two or three years together, and we learned to get to know one another during the training period, and also we learn to appreciate one another. They become dear friends and they are going to be my friends all my life. We live in a very small space.

9:11 Speaker 1: The toilet are thirty twenty meters away, but is part of the adventure with a capital A if not a problem, and we are adapted to this very well. We all have separate keeping.

9:26 Speaker 3: A faith.

9:29 Speaker 1: And we can't find small resources even in that small space. Because we can work in it. We can use our computers, so living close to the other two members is a good question that can be answered. It is going very well question.

9:49 Speaker 6: From lookas in Bremen, what does the waiter? What does the water taste like?

10:01 Speaker 3: Hi Luca and Hi Bremen.

10:03 Speaker 4: Again, so the water tastes like really neutral, like on Earth, like you would have a tap water. And I feel this is absolutely incredible, Okay, because you know the water comes from ninety eight percent of recycled water.

10:19 Speaker 3: This is amazing.

10:20 Speaker 4: Imagine so an astronaut on board the ISS uses an average five liters.

10:27 Speaker 3: Of water every day.

10:28 Speaker 4: On Earth people would use one hundred and fifty liters of water every day, but us.

10:34 Speaker 3: Everything is recycled. Knowing that, and knowing that this hole's chain recycles even from urine.

10:44 Speaker 4: Into drinking water, I find it amazing that water doesn't have a taste all right.

10:49 Speaker 3: Another fun fact about water.

10:51 Speaker 4: Do you know that in space we cannot drink sparkling water because it has CO two inside and the bubbles wouldn't be doing a lot of good into our stomachs because bubbles would.

11:03 Speaker 3: Behave differently as compared to Earth. So you know, if you're German, you probably drink a lot of.

11:09 Speaker 4: Sparkling water because it's it's it's very common in Germany, but in here we don't have this, and so I will enjoy it when I go back to Germany.

11:24 Speaker 6: Okay, here's the question from students from secondary school Daniel Sambio in Almada and Portugal. When did you first realize you wanted to become an astronaut?

11:42 Speaker 3: Thank you, and I again for Portugal.

11:45 Speaker 4: I wanted to become an astronaut since I was a little girl, so I cannot give you there was no specific event when I just woke up and.

11:53 Speaker 3: I said, yeah, I want to do that. No, it was it came naturally.

11:57 Speaker 4: And and because I was so interested in that, I read a lot of books, and every book I've read, I was just like, oh yeah. And every time I went to science museum and see like stories of astronauts, I was just like, oh yeah, and I.

12:10 Speaker 3: Wanted even more to discover about this field.

12:13 Speaker 4: And for me, you know, I was raised in the countryside, so when I was just going to museums or learning more about spaceflight, I was just like, Wow, this is amazing.

12:24 Speaker 3: It's far from where I come from.

12:27 Speaker 4: So yeah, all of this was a great adventure to learn about space and I really enjoyed. There was just one very specific moment that happened when I was fourteen years old. The first French woman astronaut lifted off from so Use, and for me, I was just like, oh my god, she looks like a real woman, so maybe astronauts are real human beings.

12:53 Speaker 3: And that day I thought, Okay, if.

12:56 Speaker 4: She looks like a real woman, and if she looks like no more, then maybe the next woman could be me. And I started believing it could happen one day. I mean, of course I had also a ton of doubts, but it was really the big start of me imagining, imagining it could become possible.

13:21 Speaker 6: Okay, So now Mary from Helsinki wants to know what happens if someone gets sick on the ISS.

13:36 Speaker 4: Hi Mary, Hi Helzinky. That's also your mom my, God, you only have good questions today.

13:42 Speaker 3: That's great.

13:43 Speaker 4: So if someone gets sick on Isis, I would say, it's a little bit the same process as what would happen on Earth.

13:49 Speaker 3: First, you would call your doctor. Talk to your doctor.

13:52 Speaker 4: We all astronauts all have flight surgeons, which are doctors dedicated to each of us, and they they would tell us okay, ask you like ask us, okay, what's going on?

14:03 Speaker 3: How did you get sick? What are your symptoms? How do you feel?

14:06 Speaker 4: And then you know, it's like there is a little place in some drawers where we have a sort of little pharmacy, and so they would guide us and say, okay, go into this drawer, bravo too, and there is a little tab and you go into the purple thing and you find a medication. And they would give us instructions to give us indications of what's to take in terms of medication. We also have good devices like ultrasounds if we need to do an ultrasound scan of the body.

14:40 Speaker 3: There are also all of the devices.

14:44 Speaker 4: For normal you know, take the temperature of the body, or assess the heart rate, assess like everything that needs to be assessed for knowing the medical condition. And as well if there is a big emergency. We were all trained to respond to big emergencies so well, we all hope that this training will never use, but we are ready in case to do the like you know, the life saving behaviors and things that that would save lives in here if they were there was a need.

15:19 Speaker 5: Okay, a new question from tous with.

15:26 Speaker 1: What was your best moment on the space station.

15:35 Speaker 6: I know.

15:39 Speaker 1: It's very difficult to answer this question because I know absolutely everything on the station now, it's difficult to say the best moment. When I arrived the first time and I discovered the I S for the first time, that was absolutely much.

15:58 Speaker 3: I do it.

15:59 Speaker 1: When I saw the absolutely the absolutely marvelous trying to rise covering the whole earth, he was magnificent. And every morning I can see I can see the Earth from tears and I love it. And when we discovered our new colleague, what we hadn't seen anybody in university for five months, and he knew people arrive and to be part of the crew, that was That was great as well. And every morning when I wake up in the morning, I say to myself, that's a mid day, a new adventure. And I'm leaving this adventure with a capital A in.

16:43 Speaker 6: Bremen with Charline, who wants to know, do you have a change of clothes?

16:56 Speaker 4: Thank you very much, Charline, and thank you Breyman. So yeah, we do have a uniform. The uniform is cargo pants, and we also have those apollos that that are given to us by the space agencies.

17:09 Speaker 3: Uh we have a sports clothed as well.

17:12 Speaker 4: We have so for for every occasion we have a clothes and we have enough so that, uh we can we can stay, you know with with good clothes and uh and yeah, it's it's interesting because the big question before you go to space is, okay, how is the body measurement gonna change? Because you know, there is fluid shift, so all of the fluids go up as opposed to on Earth where the fluids go down, and usually the sizes of your clothes they change a little bit. So what we we do with the ground teams we prepare like one size up one size down of each of the things so that we can like be ready for whatever size we change and and in case we need.

17:56 Speaker 3: Also we can trade clothes and say, oh, do do you guys have a shorts? That is can I can I try it? And then we we we trade and it works well.

18:10 Speaker 5: Okay.

18:10 Speaker 6: Now another question from students from Scholarbaric Lace. Does the sixteenth sunset a day mess with your internal clock or does your brain just get used to it?

18:33 Speaker 4: So that's very interesting question because the the internal the clock, the internal the body clock.

18:39 Speaker 3: Is right now on GMT. So we are uh that right now?

18:46 Speaker 4: For me, it's one pm, and so the because there is no like there aren't not all of the modules have windows.

18:57 Speaker 3: Then sometimes we don't even know if it's day or night outside.

19:02 Speaker 4: So it's very interesting because you only know it if you go towards the window. So during the day we are very very busy, and so for example in here, if I'm working in Columbus, there is no window, so.

19:16 Speaker 3: I have no idea what time it is.

19:20 Speaker 4: In the evening, around six pm, we would put the settings and dim lightings like pre sleep lightings we call them, so that it starts being a little bit like less lighting, less powerful light, and so that the body understands that it's the evening. And at night we usually turn off most of the lights, but we keep just a few of them so that we know our way in case.

19:46 Speaker 3: We need to go fast somewhere.

19:49 Speaker 4: But yeah, it's really easy to be in sync with the clock that we are working on, which is GMT time.

20:00 Speaker 5: Large charity of it.

20:03 Speaker 6: Okay, so we just have a very last question, how much free time do us not have? Is from Ella from Finland.

20:15 Speaker 3: Hello Ellen, Hello Finland. So the free time, so during the day days are really busy.

20:24 Speaker 4: So the briefing starts at seven thirty in the morning and then we have the whole day busy, and then the debriefing at night is seven thirty pm, then after dinner and then preparing to go to bed and going to bed. So the free time is mostly in the weekends, but in the weekend we also work sometime.

20:47 Speaker 3: And in the weekends, like most of the weekend, we have them free. And so what do we do?

20:53 Speaker 4: Each of us have different activities. Some people really like taking pictures they do that. Some people like doing some salt videos or some like some sorts of science videos. Some people like to interact with friends and families just or are also listening to music reading.

21:12 Speaker 3: So yeah, we have a good variety of activities to do in here.

21:16 Speaker 4: And sometimes also we have crew specific activities like crew dinners. Also crew little activities like movie watching or crew fun games to do that we like to do it as a crew.

21:32 Speaker 6: Here, we are now done with this event, so see you next time in Europe, in Toudos, in Brahman, in Lisboa and.

21:47 Speaker 5: In Zinky Bye bye wo.

21:52 Speaker 3: Yes, thank you so much.

21:54 Speaker 4: I really appreciate talking to all of you, and I hope I will be able to come to the ground visit you as again.

22:01 Speaker 3: I love visiting science museums.

22:03 Speaker 4: That's great for me and I wanted to really thank you everyone who worked on organizing this event.

22:09 Speaker 3: And hi again to all the visitors.

22:20 Speaker 6: Bye bye station, this is Houston ACR.

22:24 Speaker 5: Thank you. That concludes the event.

22:29 Speaker 3: Thank you to all participants.

22:31 Speaker 1: Sir A Sierra, thank you, and station.

22:34 Speaker 5: We are now

22:35 Speaker 3: Resuming operational audio communications.