Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Going to Bed for NASA

Episode Date: March 16, 2009

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Going to bed for NASA, 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 of the Planetary Society. Heather Archuleta loves human spaceflight so much she stayed in bed for seven weeks, not even getting up to, well, to do anything. But she's up now, and we'll talk to her in a couple of minutes. Bill Nye says the world can't afford to turn space into just another military theater, and Emily Lakdawalla will step out of the blogosphere to bring us another space Q&A.

Bruce Betts will light up the sky with today's What's Up segment. Speaking of Emily's blog, did you see her big announcement? It's at planetary.org, where you can also read her story about the Ulysses solar orbiter. It's still kicking and still returning data months after Nigel Angold told us it had just days to live. What is it with these spacecraft that just keep going and going? After weeks of delay, Space Shuttle Discovery made it off the pad last Sunday in another of those spectacular night launches.

A fruit bat sitting on the external tank nearly got the ride of its life. Elsewhere in the cosmos, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is back up and running, while sister orbiter Mars Odyssey successfully rebooted. And way out by that pretty ringed planet, Cassini switched over to its backup set of thrusters. No big deal. The first set was just getting crotchety after 11 years in space. There's a new 24x7 webcam on the International Space Station. We've got the link at planetary.org slash radio. Here's Bill. Hey, hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy, vice president of Planetary Society.

And this week, I'd like to talk about danger. I'd like to talk about not deploying, not making, not using weapons in space. And here's why. It costs too much. See, there's been a lot of talk the last week with a few problems adding up, diplomatic problems. These would be a former Soviet satellite got crashed into by an Iridium communications satellite. China is planning to have an all-military space station, like separate from a civilian space station. The United States Air Force is planning a cyberspace division that will also cover outer space, a whole new branch.

Now, you could say that space has always had weapons in it for the last 50 years or so. Anytime you put a global positioning system in space and use it to send aircraft someplace, well, I guess that's a weapon. But here's the problem, everybody. This has been understood for 60 years. In space, with weapons, whoever shoots first is way ahead. Whoever shoots first wins. If you shoot down 90% or 99% of the enemy's incoming weapons, well, there's still 1% of those weapons and you lose. Now, people have understood this for decades. So everybody, we got to calm down. And here's why. Our space resources are limited. We only have so many rockets. We only have so much budget for each of these undertakings. So we don't want to go squandering it on plans and systems that everybody has known for a long time are not going to be

cost effective. This is affecting the human questions out there. Where do we come from? Why are we here? All those wonderful planetary society questions are being pushed aside by systems that we know just can't work. Now, I'm right there with you. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. That's right, yes. But space-based weapons are just really hard to make cost-effective because of the offense. Whoever shoots first comes out ahead. We've got to use our diplomatic resources.

We've got to use diplomacy in all of these countries and all these space agencies to just calm it down so that we can work together to explore space, improve the human condition, and make discoveries over horizons we can't even imagine. That's what we do here at the Planetary Society. So thanks for listening if you did, but I gotta fly. Bill Nye, the planetary guy. Heather Archuleta is a true believer. The California native now lives in a town outside Austin, Texas, where she plays hockey and works in the virtual world as an IT professional. But it's human spaceflight that really gets her going,

and when she found out she could help get us to Mars, she jumped at the chance. In fact, she jumped into bed. NASA and earlier agencies have been conducting bedrest studies for decades. The physiological and psychological knowledge gained has helped prepare us for long-duration spaceflight and has benefited earthbound medical research. I got her on the Skype connection a few days ago. Heather, I admit, when I got a call from basically a PR guy who said, hey, you ought to talk to Heather, I thought, well, how much is there in that for our show where we usually are talking to scientists and astronauts and engineers and so on. And I'm so glad that I did because it turns out there's a heck of a lot going on in your life beyond this

bedrest study. I think in our initial conversation, I accused you of being a space groupie, which I think you're a heck of a lot more than that. How would you describe yourself? Oh, gosh. Well, I hope so. I like to think of it more as being a space enthusiast. I actually do IT for a living, but I wanted to find something a little more unique to do, and space has always been a side interest of mine. And when I found this study, I just thought it was a great extension of my interest in space, and I learned a lot more about space science and our quest for Mars than I had known before. I don't know.

It's something that I'm really proud of. I love the fact that we're still reaching out, and I hope that we get to the red planet. And these types of studies will tell us a lot about health concerns, you know, blood pressure, anti-gravity, all of the things that they need to keep in mind when they're trying to get a human as far away as Mars is. Amen to all of that. And I also congratulate you and thank you for being part of this effort to prepare us for those very long trips in weightlessness. When did you finish and how long were you stuck in bed? And how long were you stuck in bed? Stuck in bed.

I was stuck in bed for 50 days. The original program was supposed to be 90 days, but unfortunately, Hurricane Ike chased us out of there on September 11th of 2008. So just actually almost exactly six months ago now. Wow. How did you even find out about the program? Wow. How did you even find out about the program? I read about it on the Wired Science blog, and it had been in a couple of other smaller publications at that point. What did it take for you to get into the program? I mean, was there a, I assume there was a somewhat strict screening process. A little intense screening process, yes. Blood draws, drug screening, background check. I think they even did a credit check. You have to pass a flight physical, neurological exam, physical exam, bone scan,

EKG. It's really, it's almost like you're going through, you know, modified astronaut training. They have to prove that you're so healthy, they can afford to tank your health a little bit to learn about what happens in microgravity to your muscles, your joints, your heart, and your bone density, stuff like that. Well, sure. I mean, it makes sense. You'd have to be pretty much as healthy as your typical astronaut. Otherwise, a study might not mean that much. Right. And you also have to prove that, you know, you won't go crazy stuck in a bed 90 days. You've got to be the kind of person who stays busy and has things to do. And, you know, I took the time to, I learned a

little sign language. I read a lot of books. We had movie nights together with the other, you know, subjects that were there. And of course, then I started that blog thinking that, you know, just like my mom and my hockey friends would read it. And then of course, thinking that, you know, just like my mom and my hockey friends would read it, and then, of course, my God, it blew up. And we're going to recommend that people visit your place on Blogspot. It's Pillownaut, P-I-L-L-O-W-N-A-U-T, one word, Pillownaut.blogspot.com, where you talk about your experiences and your life, and I also have links to a lot of other information about these studies,

which have been going on for a long time. We'll get to that in a second. Were you actually in bed the entire time? They let you get up now and then, right? No, never. Once you go head down, they put the bed at a minus six degree tilt so that all the blood rushes to your head, simulating microgravity. It takes all the pressure off the lower extremity. And once you're there, you're, you know, that's your launch day when they do that. And then you're, you're lying down for 90 days straight. That's, although I think the program's been modified now to 60 days, but no matter what, during the head down period, you don't move. You shower lying down. You, you know, everything. Everything else, all the stuff they ask astronauts, how they do when they're on orbit.

You do not get up for any reason. I'll be darned. Did you at any point during these 50 days say, I must be crazy. I never should have done this. Yes, of course. I wouldn't be a human if I hadn't had a couple of those moments. You have to get used to doing things from a different angle. So there are daily challenges. So yeah, there was a couple of times where I thought, oh gosh, what did I get myself into? But I had solid reasons for doing it. I wanted to contribute. I'm interested in the science.

I wanted to see if I could do it. I'm interested in the science. I wanted to see if I could do it. You know, everybody wants to test themselves and see if they can hack what an astronaut goes through. I don't know about everybody, but I'd love to try. We get a lot of applications. What happened on that 50th day when, well, they had to move you out to get out of the way of the hurricane, but how was it standing up for the first time in that long a period?

Very painful. Very painful. It's like knives shooting up into your feet the first time you touch the ground, yeah. And got my blood pressure shot up, and over the next couple of days, I had such muscle aches. I mean, really, I was like shuffling along. I looked like I was about 120 years old. But you know, when a storm the size of Texas itself is headed towards you, you just move. We didn't question it. We had to get up, we got up, and we got out of there. But I'll find out

in a couple of days if my bone density is good enough for me to get back into another program later. So I might do it again. So you're going into another scan, and you actually want to try this again. I hope so. I really am pretty type A. It irritates me when I don't get to finish things that I've started. So I'd love to complete a successful program. We'll continue our visit with NASA bedrest research participant Heather Archuleta in a minute. This is Planetary Radio.

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The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Heather Archuleta didn't get out of bed for 50 days, and she wants to do it again, for even longer. Heather is one of many non-astronauts who have helped prepare us for long-duration spaceflight by simulating weeks or months in a weightless or microgravity environment. It took a hurricane to get her out of that NASA bed last September. The first few days were agony, especially for someone who had always led a very active life. Keep in mind that she didn't even get to do the rigorous exercises that are part of the daily routine for orbiting astronauts.

She feels the effects even now. Well, how are you feeling now? What is it almost six months later? Six months later. I'm actually feeling great. I exercise a lot. I eat really well, so I healed pretty quickly. But a few things have hung on. I still have a little back pain, still get a little stiffness in my feet. I think that's my bone density trying to regrow itself. I do still get fatigue. That comes on pretty unexpectedly sometimes. I mentioned about these studies that have been going on for a long time.

You pointed me to a nice article. In fact, it's on your Blogspot site about the pioneer in this who was doing it very nearly, or maybe it was, 50 years ago. Oh, my gosh, yeah. When I first heard about this, I thought it sounded kind of interesting. I didn't realize that this had been going on since the late 1950s. I think it started in the military. But, yeah, Dr. Dwayne Graveline was one of the first groups of astronauts that they singled out for jet pilot training in the 1950s. first groups of astronauts that they singled out for jet pilot training in the 1950s. And he was the very first scientist who tried both bed rest and water immersion to study effects of microgravity.

Because, of course, back then they were only going to send people up for two, three days at a time. Now we're looking at trips to Mars, which will take, you know, 18 months. So you stand on the shoulders of a lot of others who've been part of these studies. It's interesting to me that 50 or more years later, there's still more for us to learn about how the human body responds to these conditions that are so totally alien. Oh, absolutely. And the studies in the 60s and 70s, I think they learned about physiological changes. The studies that are going on now, and actually the Russian and European space agencies are preparing to do a 520-day study, which I think will yield a lot more information about the psychological effects as well. So each

time it's done and every time a different agency does it, they concentrate on different things. They study different things. And, you know, I think we find a new rich tapestry of possibilities every time they do. What kinds of kudos and attagirls did you get from NASA and the space community? I mean, I saw some pictures of astronauts dropping in to thank some of your colleagues. Yeah, that was really nice. I actually met one astronaut while I was there, and another one recorded a message to us thanking us for going through the bed rest studies

because it means that they don't have to do as much countermeasures up in space with us down there doing it. Yeah, I found so many people that were interested in it. Even I was surprised that as time went on, I got so many readers and so many people sending me nice messages. And well, a lot of people come right out and tell me that I'm crazy. That's okay, too. That's okay, too. You're interested in doing this again. It's not just for you. I mean, you frequent events. Uh, what is it? Uh, Texas, uh, space week, I guess has been underway or was underway. And it's still underway right now. It's still going on.

So you go to these things and, and what handout brochures? to look out for any bulletin board where I can put up my flyers. And I'm armed with pamphlets all the time with NASA. And I get a lot of requests from parents who want me to send little toys or stickers to their kids and stuff, little NASA packets and things like that. What does somebody do if they'd like to be considered for one of these studies? Oh, well, NASA has a site, although unfortunately right now it's down for maintenance, but that should be up very soon. I've got the brochures on my blog, and you can click to NASA from there where there's a bunch of phone numbers that you can call and see if you're eligible.

I also have a breakdown of the screening process on my blog and every step that you would have to pass if anybody's curious. Let's go back to the other things you do in your life that have a lot to do with space stuff. I mean, you really are quite an enthusiast. You were telling me offline that you go to launches. You've seen a lot of the Apollo capsules. You really dig this stuff, don't you?

Yeah, I'm a big planetarium fan. I belong to the Academy of Sciences. I've seen two shuttles take off. Yeah, I even went to the Walk of Fame in Los Angeles once to see the little star for the Apollo 11 guys on Hollywood and Fine. It's interesting. I didn't even know that was there as many times as I've been on Hollywood Boulevard. And we should note that you're a native Californian, so I guess maybe you had other opportunities. Is there a community? I mean, do you at least virtually hang out with a lot of other people who feel the way that you do? Maybe they're not scientists or aerospace engineers or astronauts, but they just love this stuff. Yes, yes. Oh, and everybody seems to love this stuff when they learn about it.

Oh, and everybody seems to love this stuff when they learn about it. Everybody's always excited about, you know, when we're going to the moon next and who's going to the space station next. The NASA channel, I think, did it a lot for the, you know, modern interest. But, yeah, I get a lot of questions. I get a lot of e-mails from people who want to know how to join this study, and I get a great response for when I post events and things like that. It's been a real eye-opener. Heather, we're about out of time.

Thank you so much. It has been really fun to talk to you, and I hope that you get your wish granted. You get into that second bedrest study, and just keep being enthusiastic like the rest of us who listen to this radio show. Oh, likewise, and thank you so much for having me. It's been great to this radio show. Oh, likewise. And thank you so much for having me. It's been great to talk to you. You bet.

Heather Archuleta is an IT professional who lives ways outside of Austin, Texas, is able to get a lot of things done online, just as we've been having this Skype conversation. But she is, by her own description, a space enthusiast, enthusiastic to the point of getting involved by joining a NASA bedrest study that kept her prone, actually a little worse than prone, with her head lower than her feet for 50 days last year. And again, we will put up a link to her site, pillowknot.blogspot.com, at planetary.org slash radio, as we always do. And as we always do, we're going to join Bruce Betts to take a look at the night sky for the coming week. That'll be what's up right after this visit with Emily for Q&A. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, NASA stated that Kepler's 95-megapixel camera is the largest ever launched into space,

but I thought that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter camera was 600 megapixels. Which one is bigger? The camera on the Kepler spacecraft really is the biggest one that NASA has ever launched into space, in terms of the number of pixels on its detector, 95 million. It's no lightweight in the mass category either, weighing in at almost 500 kilograms. But it's also true that Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's camera, named HiRISE, can produce pictures that have many times as many pixels as Kepler's. But HiRISE's detector actually contains only about 20,000 pixels, a tiny fraction of Kepler's.

How are HiRISE pictures so big? The two cameras take pictures in quite different ways. Kepler takes pictures the same sort of way your digital camera does. It's called a framing camera. Point, click the shutter, and save the image. Every single pixel in the image was recorded at exactly the same moment and for exactly the same length of time. HiRISE works very differently.

It's a push-broom camera. Its detector is a single line of 20,000 pixels. As Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter circles Mars, the high-rise field of view sweeps along the spacecraft's orbit, essentially clicking the shutter every time the spacecraft moves one pixel's distance along the surface of the planet and recording each line of pixels into memory. It takes a period of several minutes for one long, skinny strip of a picture to be formed in memory. Since Mars' surface is mostly unchanging on minute-long timescales,

it doesn't usually matter that one end of the picture was taken many minutes later than the other end. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Got Bruce Betts on the Skype line. It's time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. And we're going to hear all about the night sky. And you know what? This has been too many weeks of doing this remotely. I'm missing your face. Or maybe I i should say i'm a missing your face because of uh the trivia contest uh that you'll be the answer you'll be revealing today but uh all in good time my pretty i'm hungry i could go for some anyway this will all be funnier or at least more understandable later in the show. So let's start out with understandable things in the night sky.

Venus doing interesting things right now. It's getting very low in the evening sky in mid to late March. Tricky to observe. And on March 25th, Venus is technically both in the evening sky and the pre-dawn sky. A rare event occurring every eight years. How can you be in two places at once? It's just cool that way. It ties to, you know, spherical nature of all these silly objects, including Earth.

But the trick is, it's mostly something to just bond with in your mind and heart, since it's really hard to observe, since it's really low in both places. But anyway, you get in the last bit of Venus in the evening sky, and then it's going to start partying in the pre-dawn sky. But Saturn's still a fixture of the evening sky, much dimmer but cool looking, and of course got those beautiful rings almost edge-on if you look at them through a small telescope. It is in the west after sunset and high overhead in the mid-evening. It is in Leo, the lion, Roar. And in the pre-dawn sky, we have got Jupiter, a really bright star-like object over in the east, getting pretty high up. And down below it considerably is Mars, much dimmer and

kind of reddish. That's the haps in the sky. Good. Lots to see. And Venus is still looking real pretty, although definitely making its farewell here in California. It farewells remarkably quickly since it's been hanging up there quite seemingly stable for a while, but over a few weeks it will farewell. Very few weeks. Moving right along to this week in space history.

In this week in space history, in 1965, Voskhod 2 was launched by the Soviet Union, and Alexei Leonov takes the world's first spacewalk. 1980, also Soviet, quite the space tragedy. A Soviet rocket explosion killed 48 workers at the launch pad there must be a something a little cheerier well for those of you remembering 1997 you'll remember comet hail bop was uh on its closest approach to earth this week 1997 moving right along to random space Random space fact. I was thinking of Hale-Bopp, and you're the big bopper.

Hello, baby. Oh, that was good. Thank you very much. So, occultations. I'll be telling you in a few weeks about at least some of us, including here on the west coast of North America, will be able to see an occultation of where it's just when one object passes in front of another, in this case, the moon passing in front of Venus as we observe it. But planets can actually pass in front of planets as well. But it's super rare, at least on a human lifetime scale.

The last time this happened was in 1818. And the next time it happens, mark your calendars, November 22nd, 2065. I'm sorry, that'll be a mere transit. Try that again. July 15th, 2067, Mercury will occult Neptune. Don't miss it. Be there. Hey, do you know what the moon does when its hair gets too long?

No, what does it do?'t miss it. Be there. Hey, do you know what the moon does when its hair gets too long? No, what does it do? Eclipse it. Thanks to the Sunday LA Times comic section and jokes submitted by one of the kids therein. And enjoyed by one of the kids here. Yeah, big ones. Alright, let us go on to the trivia contest and we asked you what was the first main belt asteroid that was discovered and apparently you've got information

about its discoverer. His name was Giuseppe Piazzi. He did that on New Year's Day in 1801. New Year's Day. He discovered Ceres, but I guess you knew that. I did. Is it Ceres or Ceres? You say potato, I say potato.

Well, actually, I don't say potato, I say potato. But different people pronounce it both ways. Okay. Well, I did also learn from our listeners that it was originally considered a planet. It was indeed. Yeah. And Herschel, William Herschel, said, nope, not a planet, it's an asteroid. But now I suppose it's just a dwarf.

Well, it's a dwarf planet. It gets both words. And everyone keeps debating that anyway. But it's still there, and it still has most of the mass or a good portion of the mass of the asteroid belt in that one body that's spherical and appears to have some water ice on it. And we'll have a spacecraft visit it in, I believe, 2015. I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah.

We'll get there and we'll learn so much more. Trivia question for the next time around. Who was the first person to get married in space? That's right. Married in space. They're still trying to pick up the rice. But this person was in space. Their spouse was on the surface of the Earth.

Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter and compete in this edition of the fabulous Planetary Radio Trivia Contest. And I am flab or fabregasted because I never heard of this. That's amazing. Now, was it some of that rice that the guys in the International Space Station were taking shelter from last week? Yeah, it could have been. They're trying to take more birds up to find it. Well, you got until

the birds in little spacesuits. I think the rice mostly stayed inside the spacecraft. You've got until the 23rd, Monday, March 23rd at 2 p.m. Pacific time to tell us about this wedded bliss out there in the vacuum, and I'm looking forward to it. All right. Everybody go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about night lights.

Thank you, and good night. He's Bruce Batts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, Everybody go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about night lights. Thank you, and good night. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and we'll be leaving the light on for you right here on What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week. Thank you.