Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Astronaut Clay Anderson: Staying In Shape In Space

Episode Date: February 4, 2008

Astronaut Clay Anderson: Staying In Shape In SpaceLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Staying in shape in space, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. Astronaut Clay Anderson spent five months floating around the International Space Station. He'll tell us today how he managed to stay in great shape. Bill Nye the Science Guy shares more of his fascination with those clouds on Mars and what they might tell us about our own planet. Speaking of planets, Emily Lakdawalla will tell us why Pluto is out but Earth is still in.

And we'll wrap up, as always, with Bruce Betts and another look at the night sky. Eclipses are coming. NASA says space shuttle Atlantis is go for launch at 2.45 p.m. Eastern this coming Thursday, February 7. Steve Frick will command a crew of seven as they deliver the European Space Agency's Columbus Laboratory Module to the ISS. Have you seen the STS-122 mission patch? There's just a touch of another logo that is near and dear to all of us in the Planetary Society. Forget the face on Mars. How about the happy face? Check it out at Emily's blog, where you can also read the

latest entry in the Dawn Mission Journal. That's at planetary.org. And here's one I could not leave alone. NASA's Deep Space Network has Beatlemania. By the time you hear this, it may have transmitted a Fab Four tune toward Polaris, the North Star. Which song? Like you really have to ask? If they like across the universe, I suppose we can expect to hear additional requests from the Polarians in about 862 years. Here's Bill Nye. Bill Nye, the planetary guy here and vice president of Planetary Society, still fascinated with these convectional clouds on Mars that were discovered by the European Space Agency's Mars Express. So looking back at the surface from above the Martian sky,

people have found that these clouds are thick enough to cause parts of Mars to be 10 degrees Celsius cooler than other parts of Mars. So then cool air on Mars, cool Martian air, will squeeze bubbles of warm Martian air up. And this is natural convection on another world. And the clouds are dry ice, mostly of frozen carbon dioxide. If you get enough of these bubbles forming on enough parts of Mars, you get these enormous waves in the Martian atmosphere. They've got to be very similar to the waves that form on Earth. So get this, my friends.

These clouds on Mars are formed in part, almost certainly, by dust that comes from outer space. Meteoroid dust that impinges on the Martian atmosphere and forms nucleation sites for carbon dioxide to freeze and make these thick clouds. Now, how many of you have thought about clouds on Earth forming on dust from outer space? I bet a few of us, but not too many, and certainly not too many people in our government who are making decisions about climate change. In other words, this is another thing that we have discovered on another world that reflects, pun intended, or shadows, pun not quite working, on Earth. By studying Mars, we are going to make another remarkable discovery about weather on Earth. Studying Mars, we are going to make another remarkable discovery about weather on Earth.

And the weather on Earth affects us all more than ever. Whether or not you've thought about it. So, my friends, this is another example of international cooperation and space exploration for the exploration, in this case, of Mars and using fundamental science, science that you're familiar with if you've ever put dry ice in your Halloween witch's cauldron, to understand the clouds on Mars that are making weather on Mars that have got to be similar to the weather on Earth. I'm just proud as heck to be part of this organization. Thanks for your support. Keep listening to Planetary Radio.

I've got to fly. Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy. Fly, Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy. Nobody ever said living in space would be easy. Packing is a drag, solar flares can give you a heck of a tan, and then there's what it does to your muscles and bone. American astronaut Clay Anderson faced that challenge head-on as he spent five months aboard the International Space Station last year. Clay turns 49 this month.

He spent a decade and a half waiting for NASA to tell him he had realized his dream. And it was almost another decade before he found himself strapped in on his way to the ISS. He's back at home with his family now. He's back at home with his family now. We talked just a few days ago about his experience and how all visitors to the vacuum have to dedicate themselves to a zero-G fitness program if they want to stand on their own two feet when they return to Mother Earth. He's optimistic about our ability to send humans on the long journey to Mars and bring them back in pretty good shape.

Clay, welcome to Planetary Radio. Thank you very much for joining us.. Clay, welcome to Planetary Radio. Thank you very much for joining us. And also, welcome back to Terra Firma. It's a somewhat belated welcome back from your, what was it, 152 days on the ISS. 151 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes, and some odd seconds, but who's counting? Close enough. We'll round up. I was intrigued by the NASA media release that I got a few weeks back that said that you were available not just to talk about your five months in space, but about something that every human faces when they are in a microgravity environment. We all know that microgravity is not terribly friendly to the human body,

but I guess you and your colleagues work pretty hard up there to stay in as good a shape as you could. Absolutely. It's very important that in the confines of zero gravity that you try to keep your muscles and bones as strong as possible for that return home. When you hit gravity again, bones as strong as possible for that return home, when you hit gravity again, it can be quite a jolt to your body. And in addition to that, we've found that we lose muscle mass and bone mass while we're in space. And if we're going to really do long-duration stints on the moon and head out to Mars where the travel time is so long, we want to make sure that we're in reasonably good shape when we arrive so that we can actually do things and safely even as small as safely execute getting off the ship in one piece. So exercise is very important. Judging from your bio, you've always been a fairly athletic guy and very physically

active. How big a challenge was this as you were up there, as you said, in zero G? big a challenge was this as you were up there, as you said, in zero G? Well, we worked out seven days a week, or I worked out seven days a week, 148 of my 152 days in space. And then the other four were spent on two different shuttles. And I also worked out on those days with the shuttle bicycle. So it wasn't hard to motivate myself because I knew that the gain was that I would be able to rehabilitate much quicker on Earth and get back to normal as fast as possible. And it was also a great stress relief for me on the space station. Weren't you doing up to a couple of hours a day in this strenuous activity? Yes. I would do, every other day we did a different form of aerobics by using

either the treadmill or the exercise bicycle. So for example, on Monday, I do the bike, on Tuesday, the treadmill, Wednesday, back to the bike, that sort of thing. Then every single day, we worked on what we call the resistive exercise device, which is a pulley machine that kind of simulates a weight gym, if you will, and we pull those cables with different resistance, and that acts as our bodybuilding with weights. Could you describe that treadmill? I mean, it takes all I can do to keep myself on an Earth-bound one for, oh, about a half hour most days of the week. You had some special challenges up there in orbit. Well, first of all, the belt is skinnier than what you would recognize in your normal gym treadmill,

which makes it a little more challenging to stay on the center. But we also have a harness that we have to wear that holds our shoulders and our waist and pulls us down to the treadmill. And the reason we do that is in zero G, obviously, you can't run unless you have something that holds you to the belt. And then we use that to increase the resistance and make it harder and harder or, you know, tougher on our bodies so that we can get in better shape. So it's a little different than what you do in the local fitness club. With all of these different activities, do you manage to pretty much work all of your muscles? No, we kind of focus by just by the way it is. We have to focus on major muscle groups.

So I found when I came home that little things, the little muscles around my abdominal region and that sort of thing that you actually use every day on Earth to help lift your legs and things, those were very weak. And so it took me a few days to get those guys thinking about being in one gravity again. And you can't exercise all of those in space. And so we focus on the big muscles in your legs, the big muscles in your arms, and the big muscles in your rear end and your back. So that's kind of how we attack the problem.

Now, in spite of all this effort, and I guess not just because of the muscles you couldn't quite get to, you're going to see some bone density loss. You're going to see some loss of strength, no matter how hard you work up there. And so you've been on a pretty strenuous program since your return. Yes. First of all, I lost 4% of my bone mass, which typically astronauts lose in the double digits. So I feel that I did pretty well there by virtue of the exercise that I did. And then once you arrive on the ground, actually the day after we landed, I was already on a bicycle pedaling away, which is part of the

requirement or part of the program that's prescribed for us. And so I worked out two and a half to three hours each day for about six weeks once I landed. The folks that were training me said I was doing pretty well and that I was, quote unquote, releasable on my own recognizance at about the third week. But one of the requirements is we stay and work out with the trainer all the way through six weeks. So I think I did pretty well and recovered quite quickly. How did you feel when you were suddenly back in Earth's gravity well? Well, let's see. Gravity stinks, I guess. You know, when you've been in zero gravity for five months

and you're floating around like Superman every day and your body gets used to that, the thump of gravity hits you pretty hard. I felt extremely heavy for the first day, but actually your body is quite amazing in that it recovers very quickly. And the second day, when I woke up that morning, I still felt heavy, but every hour it got progressively better until by the end of the day I was feeling pretty normal. And your program continues today? I mean, are you doing anything now a few months later that you weren't doing before this mission was undertaken?

Well, I'm kind of back on my own workout program, which is prescribed in conjunction with the trainers that the astronauts have here in Houston. And so I'm working out kind of like I did before I left, and I feel pretty good. I just had a couple weeks in Italy, though, where we ate more pasta probably than we worked out. So I'm going to have to get back in the gym kind of as my New Year's resolution. I'll be right back with more from International Space Station astronaut Clay Anderson. This is Planetary Radio. Hey, Bill Nye the Science Guy here. I Anderson. This is Planetary Radio. go to all this trouble? Simple. We believe in the PB&J, the passion, beauty, and joy of space

exploration. You probably do too, or you wouldn't be listening. Of course, you can do more than just listen. You can become part of the action, helping us fly solar sails, discover new planets, and search for extraterrestrial intelligence and life elsewhere in the universe. Here's how to find out more. You can learn more

about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Our guest is American astronaut Clayton Anderson, who spent five months on the International Space Station last year as part of Expedition 15. His unrelenting schedule included three spacewalks.

That schedule didn't let up much when Clay returned to Earth on November 7. It's a good thing exercise benefits your mind almost as much as your body. You talked about the stress relief that you were able to get both on the ISS and I'm sure that you still get from being an active person and that your days are still pretty busy down there. Yeah, the post-flight process is not for the faint of heart. Once we land, we're, as a station crew member, we're extremely busy with debriefs and the physical fitness aspect of it for the first four or five weeks. And then at that point, we're supposed to try to take some time off, but it doesn't always work that way because there are a lot of folks

that want to hear about our journey and have us tell some stories and talk to folks on the radio and all that good stuff. So we kind of have to carve out a little section for us to help us relax and reacquaint with our families. But I'll be able to do that in the next couple weeks, I think. The other thing that I wondered about here, and pardon me for bringing this up, you are closer in age to my bracket than to some of your colleagues in the astronaut corps. Do you think that meant that you faced any special challenges? It's possible that I did. You know, I don't really know.

My eyes are good. My ears are good. My heart is good. It's kind of an individualistic thing. Some folks that are younger can have eye problems, ear problems, that sort of thing. Some folks that are older can. So I guess it's kind of an individual basis as to how your body reacts to zero gravity and whether you have big changes in your body or small changes and then how fast you recover. So I'm feeling pretty good. I feel young. I don't feel

like I'm ready to move into the old folks home yet, but it did take me a little longer than when I was younger to recover from the muscle soreness and that sort of thing. So tell me, after all of this, how do you feel about our prospects, that is humanity's prospects, How do you feel about our prospects, that is humanity's prospects, for long-duration flights, multi-year missions to Mars and beyond? I feel good about it. I think we have a lot of questions to answer still. You know, I was living on a space station that was the equivalent volume of a three-bedroom house. And whether you can take a spaceship to Mars that has that much room, those questions remain to be answered,

and I guess I'm pretty doubtful that we'll fly something that big to Mars. And so when you think about a six- to nine-month trip just to get there and the amount of exercise for a crew of four perhaps would have to do, you know, you need a place to exercise, you need the equipment to do that exercise, and I think those are all key questions that we still need to answer, how big the equipment will be, how much space it will take up, and how effective it will be. So I'm kind of interested to see how it's going to pan out over the next several years. Clay, let's turn to some of your other personal experiences as an astronaut. I mean, you really, another press release that came out about you described you as, well, if you'll, this is NASA's term, the little engine that could,

in that you started work at the Johnson Space Center in 1983 in mission planning, but you also that year put in your first application to become a mission specialist, and it was 15 years later that you got accepted to the program. Did you ever lose faith? Well, actually, I did. Right before my first interview was in 1996, and I wasn't selected until 98. But just before that time, my wife and I were actually talking about a career move and a relocation to somewhere else and trying something different, because it certainly didn't seem at that time that NASA was too interested in making me an astronaut. And when we returned from that little trip that we took,

it was actually the time I got the phone call that said, hey, could you come do an astronaut interview with us? And that sort of relit my fire. And I did apply every year since 1983 when I first became eligible, and I'm really glad that I stuck with it, and I'm glad that they stuck with me because I've had a wonderful time, and it's been an awesome experience. You got picked up in 1998, and then it was another nine years, and then, of course, that's when you made it up on STS-117 to the International Space Station

and served as a flight engineer and science officer, which I imagine was at least a couple of full-time jobs. Yeah, it sure seemed like it. You know, I guess patience was a virtue for me. And, you know, originally I was scheduled for about a two-and-a-half-month stint in space, and they moved me up to fly early on STS-117, which gave me the five months in space. So it's all worked out well. You definitely have to be patient as an astronaut, both in the application process and then even once you're selected. But I think it gives kids a great perspective on the fact that things don't always come

easy to you in life, and you have to put a little work and effort, and you have to sustain to see some of the results sometimes. If you got the call, would you be up there again? Yeah, I would. I would definitely go on a shuttle flight. The impact to family is a lot less. You know, it's about a nine-month training template with a couple weeks in space. For us to go on the long-duration route again would be a definite family discussion

where we'd have to decide and do it as a family. So we're not ready to think about that sort of thing yet. We still want to relax for a while, and we'll just see what happens when it comes. One last question. Did you get to write that song you had in mind? I got started on it. Unfortunately, when we talked about being the flight engineer and science officer, I didn't have a lot of spare time. So I wasn't quite able to accomplish as much as I want. But that's something I'm going to press on with on the ground and see if I can't get it done. All right.

Well, I hope you can keep that melody in your head and get it down on paper. And I'll tell you, we'll be the first to play it if we get it recorded. And we'll put it on right here on Planetary Radio. All right. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us today. It's been my pleasure. Thank you. Clayton Anderson, Clay Anderson, is a NASA astronaut.

He, as you heard, spent 152 days between the shuttle and the International Space Station. Last year, returning to Earth in pretty darn good shape and continuing that effort here on the ground and talking to folks like us about how he accomplished it. We will be back with Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. That will be after we get in shape with a Q&A segment from Emily. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, They say Pluto is not a planet because it hasn't cleared its orbit. Do the recent near misses by asteroids mean that Earth has not cleared its orbit and therefore isn't a planet?

The new definition states that a planet is a celestial body that orbits the sun, has enough gravity to assume a nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. If you strictly interpret the requirement that a planet has cleared its neighborhood, then nothing in the solar system is a planet. Most astronomers agree that the definition as worded is a bit confusing, and what they meant is that a planet is something whose gravitational influence totally dominates everything else in its region of space. For example, Jupiter shares its orbit with a large population of little bodies called

Trojans, which orbit the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter in two gravitationally stable positions located 60 degrees ahead and behind the planet. Those stable points only exist because of the dominating influence of Jupiter's tremendous gravity. Similarly, Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit, so people quite reasonably ask if Neptune can be called a planet under the new definition. But Pluto has been captured into an orbital resonance with Neptune, such that Neptune orbits the Sun twice for every three times that Pluto does. Neptune's gravity dominates the orbital behavior of Pluto, making Neptune a planet and Pluto not. Earth's gravitational interactions with the near-Earth objects will eventually clear

each one from our neighborhood, either by tossing it into a different orbit or by smashing into it. Earth is big, so Earth will win in any such encounter, but this method of clearing Earth's neighborhood may be harmful to humans. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. We've got him on the Skype connection, and we've got a little musical accompaniment there, I think, if you listen carefully. Yes, I'm at a piano convention, and it just seemed like a good place to record it.

Yeah, great, great. We'll make this the soundtrack for our lives. Really, I think most people see planetary radio as the soundtrack for their lives already. Let's hope. And you know one of the reasons why? Because we tell them cool things in the night sky. Ooh. Or the day sky. Let night sky or the day sky.

Let's start with the day sky. If you're in Antarctica, you can see an annular solar eclipse. Or if you're in New Zealand or eastern Australia, a partial solar eclipse on February 7th. So check that out. Of course, great for you in a limited part of the world. We've got about half the world that's going to be able to check out a total lunar eclipse on February 20th or 21st, depending on your time zone. The mid-eclipse is at 726 Pacific Time. That's 726 p.m. Pacific, 1926, on February 20th.

So if you are in the Americas or in Europe or Africa, you've got a good shot at checking out at least a good portion of this total lunar eclipse. And we'll put a link up on our website to the NASA eclipse page. You can get more detailed information on when it starts and stops and things like that. We've also got cool planets in the sky. If you look in the pre-dawn east, right now it is spectacular. Low in the east, very low, but the two really bright star-like objects are actually Jupiter and Venus appearing very close to each other. Venus being the brightest of the star-like objects, but Jupiter also much brighter than any of any star. And they are very close together and gradually

moving farther apart with Jupiter to the upper right of Venus. So check those out. Also in the evening sky, we've got Mars high overhead, the bright orangish looking star. And we also have Saturn right now rising in the early evening, and it'll be over there in the east looking a little bit yellowish, not as bright as these other planets we've been talking about. Very cool, especially if you pull out a small telescope, you can see the rings. On to this week in space history. I know you love this one, Matt. 1971, Alan Shepard hits a golf ball on the moon.

Yeah, I really do. I would love to emulate him. Of course, I guess I'd have to learn how to golf first. Well, I think that's the least of your challenges, but okay. Nine years ago, 1999, Stardust was launched. Of course, already has returned back to Earth and returned pieces of a comet and pieces of interstellar dust. So, very successful mission. Shall we go on to Random Space Fact?

A lovely little bit of Skype reverb there. Oh, that's nice. Jupiter. Let's talk Jupiter. It's big. Have I ever mentioned that? I can't remember, but we'll take your word for it. All right.

Well, I'll even give you more detail. 318 Earth masses. That's the mass of Jupiter. It is not only big, it's a heavy puppy. So it's kind of hard to imagine how big it is. Of course, small compared to the sun, but we won't even go there right now. But we'll talk a little bit more about Jupiter in just a little bit. Meantime, let's go on to the trivia contest.

And we asked you last time, diving deep into the bureaucratic, well, actually fairly shallow into the bureaucratic world of space, we asked you, what are the names of the four mission directorates at NASA, the four mission directorates? How'd we do, Matt? I thought that we'd have a limited number of responses to this because, you know, it's not as exciting as some of the other questions, but we actually had a lot of responses. One of them came from John Gallant. He's not our winner, but he provided a nice little thumbnail synopsis of what each division does. Aeronautics, exploration systems, science and space operations, for example.

Science, exploring the Earth-Sun system, our own solar system, and the universe beyond. But do you know who our winner was? Oddly enough, I do not know. It was James Wyckoff, first-time winner, as far as I can tell, out of Juneau, Alaska. So way up there on the, about as far as you can get from that eclipse, unfortunately. But we'll try and make him feel a little bit better by sending him a Planetary Radio t-shirt. And by the way, Bruce, while we're at it, I have to mention Jamaica Marshall. Jamaica Marshall, who entered the contest, got it right, but Random.org did not smile upon her,

but she did say, get this, I love the show. It has inspired me to start my BS in astronomy. I think that's worth a shirt, don't you? Oh, I think that's totally worth a shirt. Anyone who wants to dedicate their lives to astronomy because of us, we'll give you a T-shirt. Oh, that's dangerous. They have to submit proof, though, I think. After Jamaica, they have to submit proof. All right, that's a good point.

Jupiter. I've got a trivia question about Jupiter. I hear it's a big planet. It is, but I want people to tell me in yet another way, how big is it? So that was your cue there. What's its diameter? You can give that to me in Earth diameters. You can give it to me in kilometers, miles, leagues, whatever you choose, as long as I can figure out if it's right.

Pretty straightforward this time around. How do we enter? Go to Planetary. Don't you know we enter? Go to Planetary.org. Don't you know? No. Go to Planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter, and hopefully be the randomly selected correct answer winner and win a Planetary Radio t-shirt.

You got until February 11, 2 p.m. on Monday, February 11, to get us that entry. We are totally out of time. All right, everybody, go out there, look up on the night sky, and think about melting marshmallows. Thank you, and good night. He's Bruce Betts. He's the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up, and he'll bring us some more next week. Join us next time as we check in with Sean Solomon, head of the Messenger mission.

Join us next time as we check in with Sean Solomon, head of the MESSENGER mission. Sean's spacecraft just whizzed by Mercury, gathering stunning images and data that gives planetary scientists a lot to talk about. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week. Thank you.