NASA Astronauts Discuss Life In Space Fast Company Innovation Festival Attendees–

1:00 Speaker 1: Attatatatas station.

2:16 Speaker 2: This is Houston. Are you ready for the event, Houston.

2:23 Speaker 3: This is station.

2:23 Speaker 1: We are ready.

2:25 Speaker 2: David Seals our with the Fast Company Innovation Festival. This is Mission Control, Houston. Please give station a call for a voice check.

2:33 Speaker 1: Station.

2:40 Speaker 3: We've got you loud and clear. Great to have you with us.

2:45 Speaker 4: I think you can hear. Can hear?

2:55 Speaker 3: We've got you loud and clear. Calm check again from is S. Welcome aboard, amazing, good morning, thanks for being here.

3:09 Speaker 3: I'm happy to be here.

3:15 Speaker 4: The left is John Kim and Zel.

3:19 Speaker 3: They are both I.

3:23 Speaker 4: And I would love to start with what's it been like being up there? What was the first sort of adaptations you had to make, and are you used to it at this point?

3:38 Speaker 1: Yeah.

3:39 Speaker 3: First of all, it's a dream come true to be here. It takes years of preparation, a lot of teams of instructors and classmates teaching us and preparing us on the ground. It's such an honor to finally be up here carrying out this mission that we spent so long dreaming about and preparing for. And it's been an extra special treat to be here with a classmate. Johnny and I were hired at the same time, it's really amazing to have a friend up here on this mission with me.

4:14 Speaker 4: Uh, Johnny, you've been up there for quite a while right now, right, Is there anything that you have done up there that's been really exciting or that you're Are you bored of anything at this point after six months in space.

4:29 Speaker 1: After six months in space, bored to know?

4:33 Speaker 5: You know, we do live in a pretty confined environment, but there's always there's always a beautiful view outside to watch and appreciate what we're looking at. As far as some of the most favorite things I've been able to do has been participating in a lot of the science experiments, science experiments including our own bodies and helping ground researchers understand how our bodies change and response to Michael gravity. But there have also been other experiments that have a lot more direct positive effects on people home at Earth, And some of that is pharmaceuticals research, trying to see how we can potentially develop any manufactured drugs that might be more potent and helpful to people on Earth.

5:18 Speaker 4: Yeah, it was actually you know, we're here with Ken from Redwire. He told us about the pillbox experiments. Would love to hear about some of your research work and things you've done that have been sort of in the realm of research, and how your background informs that as well.

5:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, we all come from different backgrounds. For me, I actually do have a scientific background. Johnny has a medical background in addition to his operational experience. It's been so interesting getting to use this platform of the International Space Station as a unique laboratory for doing research and developlopment for things that we can't do on Earth. Of course, as astronauts were inherently interested in how do we make spaceflight safer, better, healthier, especially as we prepare to go farther afield and for longer durations, So going to stay for a long time on the Moon and eventually onto the surface of Mars, which are a thousand times farther away than the International Space Station is from Earth.

6:26 Speaker 3: But here because you can be weightless and just floating like this microphone, here you can grow really small crystals that would otherwise be affected by little things like touching the container that they're grown in, or these larger scale, messy, buoyancy driven processes. I used to be a geobiologist, and so I am very familiar with these small scale subtle processes like diffusion or like really small scale kinetics and thermodynam that are just messed up. The signal is really hard to read when you've got advection convection moving around and changing the chemical signal.

7:08 Speaker 3: So it's a great place to develop tiny crystals that are useful for researchers just from a purely scientific standpoint, but also for pharmaceutical development and growing really big or really pure crystals.

7:25 Speaker 4: Can I ask about some of the other research that you're doing up there as well? I mean, the farmar and D is very exciting, is what we've talked about a lot, But what are some of the other areas of work and research that you're doing every day?

7:40 Speaker 5: So Xena taught a lot about how her past experiences and interests as a microbiologists and how so much of what we see today is in that field. And she mentioned I have a medical background, and some of the research that we're doing on our own human bodies is really really interesting. You know, something as simple as collecting saliva throughout one's long duration mission to see from an immunology perspective of how our bodies change in response to that. Just last week I participated in a logical study that involves many different countries around the world studying to see how our bodies change, specifically for this experiment, how our vasculature changes, and how that might affect, say, our vision.

8:30 Speaker 5: There is a syndrome called space associated neuroocular syndrome, which we have a better understanding than we did in the past. We don't quite fully understand it, but a lot of the research that we do here helps us understand how we develop it and how we might develop countermeasures against it. Because if we certainly want to be successful as we go on very long duration missions to the Moon and Mars, we have to make sure we completely understand what's going on and any kind of maladaptive features that happen re sponsor microgravity, we have a way to counteract it, just like we do for muscle atrophy and bone loss.

9:08 Speaker 4: Can you tell us a bit about the sort of measures you take to prevent muscle atrophy and bone loss in space.

9:17 Speaker 3: Yeah. One of the biggest, most important things that we do is exercising every single day for two hours. This includes a lot of cardio work. So we have basically a stationary bike. It doesn't have a seat because we need it but a stationary bike. And then we also have a treadmill with a harness and bungies that keep us coming down to the treadmill. When we're up here weightless floating around, our heart actually doesn't have to work very hard to pump and circulate the blood in our system, and so that's a really important part of maintaining our heart health as well as strength.

9:52 Speaker 3: We also have a really great machine. It's a resistive exercise machine called a red and we can dial up basically hydraulic load and then operate it like you would a barbell, but it's got that resistance instead of putting weighted plates on the end of a bar bell, and that loading is really really important for keeping our bone mass as well as our muscle mass. A lot of the impacts that we experience as astronauts here are very similar to patients who are osteoporitic on the ground, aging populations, immunocompromise populations, So it's important for us to keep up.

10:27 Speaker 3: And then that also helps us study these processes and how we recover from them so that we can help those on home at home.

10:36 Speaker 4: And I know it is both of your first time up there, so you haven't had the experience of going up, going back to Earth yet. What is sort of the anticipated reaction as a result of that. Besides, I guess maybe like dropping a lot of stuff because you expected to float.

10:56 Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a funny thing you mentioned is getting you to microgravity. It's so much easier to lose things. I actually really appreciate gravity. I think it'll be nice to set something down and know that it won't go anywhere if I turn my head. But to answer your question, we have these organs inside of our ears, so they called the semi circular canals, and they have a really special fluid in them, and we have sensors that detect the movement of this fluid and that helps us understand acceleration and specifically, when it comes to gravity, it gives us a sense of where the floor is or what gravity is doing.

11:33 Speaker 5: Space does not have that. In a microgravity environment, our canals are very confused, and so this mismatch of signals between what our organs are saying and what our brain is interpreting results in a really, really tough well for me. It manifests itself in motion sickness, and it only takes a few days to get over. Our brains are incredibly and neuroplastic, but what comes up must come down, and so when we return to Earth, for a lot of people, it really affects people in different ways. It can also result in severe motion sickness, and so we're going to keep ourselves hydrated.

12:14 Speaker 5: There are some pharmaceutical medications we can take to help combat that. But I'm sure you know, this amazing adventure we've been on it makes it all worth.

12:23 Speaker 4: It, absolutely, And you know, once you are past the motion sickness of being in space, and when you're not doing research or working out for two hours a day, what are some things that you do on station that keep you stimulated and not. I mean, it seems like it would be hard to be bored in space, but I'm sure it happens.

12:48 Speaker 3: You are exactly right, it's really hard to be born here on the International Space Station. We've got each other for company. For one, I think NASA does a really excellent job of selecting astro and our international partners do a great job of selecting astronauts and cosmonauts who are not only really technically proficient, but also great teammates. And so that makes the adventure, a lot of fun. We played games with each other after dinner after our last evening meeting, and of course there's always the view out the window that we'll never get old.

13:26 Speaker 4: Okay, so this is a weird one. I was talking to ken Marel before this about this. I saw TikTok about a girl who does like sc stuff, and she ordered the scent of space? Can you tell us about what space smells like and why it's kind of weird?

13:47 Speaker 3: So this is our first time here on the International Space Station. Johnny was on board earlier when they did a space walk the previous expedition, so he might have smelled this smell. I have not yet. From what I hear, it's a little bit like burnt toasts, a little bit like ozone. Some of that is maybe the smell of space. Some of that is maybe just off gassing of volatiles that are in the metal of the space station itself.

14:16 Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's a really good description. I The closest thing I'd say is it's smelling burnt and metal. It was a very metallic smell and very burnt, and I think for the reasons you describe, maybe some volatiles coming off the chemicals during the repressurization. Not entirely sure, but it was definitely a unique smell when you smell for the first time. Oh, I'm not going to forget that.

14:42 Speaker 1: Awesome.

14:43 Speaker 4: So I was gonna mention this earlier, but you're both up there. It's the twenty fifth anniversary of continuous human presence in space for both of you, Like, what does it feel like to be part of that legacy and helping drive innovation in space? Still, whether you're doing research on you or doing research on behalf of companies or NASA, how do you feel about being part of the legacy of space and space exploration?

15:13 Speaker 3: It's deeply humbling. I think I speak for both of us when I say we wanted to be part of the NASA mission and human spaceflight, specifically to be part of something greater than any individual can do on our own. And whether that's twenty five years of astronauts living on the space station or more importantly, all of the teams across the entire globe it has taken to make this space station possible, it's just incredibly connecting, incredibly humbling to be part of that legacy.

15:48 Speaker 4: All right, do you have any questions discussion we have, Yeah, we have a question from Ariel.

15:59 Speaker 1: Hi.

16:00 Speaker 6: I just wanna say it's great to see you again. We did a panel together in Boston ages ago. Congratulations on both of you, to both of you for your space flight mission. Which module are you in and can you tell the audience a little bit about the physical structure of how the station works and where you guys are particularly right now?

16:22 Speaker 5: Hi, Reel, I actually remember that Boston visit. It was one of my love of going to I love Boston, so any chance I can visit is always a good one. We're in the Japanese module. We call it the GEM Japanese Experimental Module. It's one of the biggest modules we have on the space station as far as it's location. If you think about the space station, it's the most forward with respect to the direction we're moving and port so forward and port. This thing right here is a small air lock. Now, it's not human rated, so you're not going to put anything live in there, but it's a great platform for getting small CubeSats into space.

16:59 Speaker 5: And actually Kimi San, who is one of the Japanese astronauts and our crewmate that's on board, has been working on this and is set to shoot out some CubeSats later this week. And actually we also have windows here. Would you mind opening that. Xena is gonna go ahead and open one of those windows. I don't know. We're in orbital we're an orbital night, so you won't be able to see much. If we're an orbital day, you could probably see some of the sunlight coming through. But Xena's just opened it. And if it were daylight, we oh, there's the moon.

17:33 Speaker 5: That's super cool. Oh yeah, if she were if it was a little bit more daylight, you'd be able to see the trusts, the solar rays, and it's just it's so beautiful.

17:46 Speaker 1: Thank you.

17:47 Speaker 6: That's amazing.

17:48 Speaker 4: Thanks And you mentioned some of the astronauts and cosmonauts up there. How many people are up there right now and how much interaction do you have with them?

18:00 Speaker 3: There are seven people on board the International Space Station right now, and we have a lot of interaction with each other every day. Some of that is just by the nature of the work that we're doing. A lot of tasks take two people or multiple people. We have a cargo ship coming up tomorrow that's going to bring a lot of experiments, a lot of resources consumables for us. Johnny's actually going to capture that with the robotic arm on the space station, but then every person on the space station is involved in getting the cargo off of that vehicle and getting it stowed.

18:34 Speaker 3: Stowage is one of the most interesting challenges that we have on a space station like this, And then some of it is just by choice. We have meals together. Maybe on a Saturday, we'll watch a movie together, play games together. It's a really awesome part of this long duration mission.

18:52 Speaker 4: Was it very click e zena when you got up there and the people who've been there for a while, we're sort of testing you out.

18:58 Speaker 3: As a nebie, I would say clicking is not the right word for it. Of course you have a bond with the crew that you've been on orbit with, but everyone is incredibly welcoming, and we're all in an office together on Earth. We've trained together throughout the years, we know each other really well. But every single expedition is different because you have a different combination of people. And so although Johnny was here for six months whereas I'm still new, it's just really really fun to be part of this mission together and be our Expedition seventy three, Part two crewmates.

19:40 Speaker 3: But I think I did a good job of proving that I was a rookie all on my own.

19:47 Speaker 4: Amazing. And we've got like one minute left, so I'm gonna give you a very easy one, I think, and just this so dumb. I'm sorry. What's your favorite space movie?

20:04 Speaker 5: We actually watched it here for a first movie night with the current crew on board. My favorite space movie is actually not very space. It's space theme, but it's not really about space, and it's actually it's Gattago. And I think it because it tells the just that indominal human spirit. There's no genetics for that, and so I think, to me, that's a metaphor that's very powerful in all of our lives. What do we use you?

20:29 Speaker 3: Oh, it's hard to choose, and Ghatika is really special. I loved watching that. I think my favorites include Arrival and maybe Aliens.

20:47 Speaker 4: Awesome we have We're I think out of time, capcom Houston? Is that what's happening? All right?

21:01 Speaker 1: Well?

21:01 Speaker 4: Thank you, yeah, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. The audience love this and give them a random a pause.

21:14 Speaker 3: Thank you all so much. This was really a lot of fun. We loved speaking with you. Thanks for the great questions, great conversation. Over and out from the International Space Station.

21:30 Speaker 5: WOW station, this is Houston ACR.

21:37 Speaker 1: Thank you.

21:37 Speaker 2: That concludes our event. Thank you to all participants. Station. We are now resuming operational audio communications