Aug 17 2009
What happens to your blood in space?
By Kate Hennessy
Today I stumbled upon the humbling realisation that I had a lot to learn, professionally, from school-children.
Astronaut, Megan McArthur. Image: NASA
Megan fields some excellent questions at Google HQ today.
I was one in their midst at Google HQ in Pyrmont this morning, listening, agog, as NASA astronaut Megan McArthur talked about working in space. Megan had fronted up in her blue NASA overalls, there to talk primarily about the fifth and final servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope she worked on in May this year.
The Hubble, of course, is known for bringing Earthlings incredible images of “celestial objects”, “heavenly bodies” and general space “phenomena” (NASA’s words, not mine!)
Such as…
A detail of the Eagle Nebula (M16) showing a portion of a pillar of gas and dust. Light from nearby bright, hot, young stars is sculpting the cloud into intricate forms and causing the gas to glow. Image: NASA
That said, the Hubble Telescope is a pretty jaw-dropping sight itself. Now 19 years old, it’s an image that’s become synonymous with both discovery and what’s yet to be discovered.
The Hubble Space Telescope hovers at the boundary of Earth and space in this picture, taken after Hubble’s second servicing mission in 1997. Hubble drifts 353 miles (569 km) above the Earth’s surface, where it can avoid the atmosphere and clearly see objects in space. Image: NASA
So when Megan plays some video of the team tinkering with the Hubble’s iconic exterior whilst floating at zero gravity, it’s compelling viewing to say the least.
“This isn’t a professional movie, just something I put together on my laptop,” Megan says, before pressing play. It was, in fact, riveting footage. The first section showed the Space Shuttle take-off from the perspective of the astronauts aboard. I filmed from the back of the room. The audio is unfortunately scratchy, but the images speak for themselves!
Various choice snippets of the work the astronauts did during their 12 days and 21 hours in space followed, including this clip of the team eating and exercising.
“We don’t bring bread, there’s too many crumbs,” Megan reveals. “We bring tortillas instead.”
Megan also reveals that space … smells.
“The tools had a very particular smell when we brought them in from space at night,” Megan tells us. “A kind of oxidised, burnt smell which was a little hard to get used to.”
After Megan’s video there is a QnA, at which point several school-uniformed arms shoot up. First, however, a grown-up question:
“What are the chances you’ll be hit by a micro-meteorite?” asks a gentleman on the sidelines. Following Megan’s answer, a kid in the audience pursues the topic with a follow-up hypothetical – a fine journalistic skill and my first inkling of these kids’ interrogative talents!
“But if you were hit by a micro-meteorite, what would happen?” he asks. Megan explains that a sonic leak detector would be used to assess the damage and, if it was bad, the shuttle would prepare to land itself ASAP. Nice one kid!
Others follow, such as:
“Can you brush your teeth?”
(Yes, but you can’t spit.)
“What happens to your blood?”
(It all goes straight to your head, and somehow this makes you pee. A lot.)
“Are you wobbly when you get home?”
(Yep, you stumble around like a toddler for a few days.)
“Could they make some gravity for you in space?”
(Yes, but they don’t. In short: it’s possible but riddled with problems.)
“How do you sleep?”
(Strapped into a sleeping bag. All your bits. Otherwise your head lolls around like a rag doll and your arms float ceilingwards so the sleeping quarter resembles a room full of mummies.)
“Is it frustrating floating all the time?”
(At first, yes, when you keep throwing yourself into lockers.)
“For the most part though, it’s just cool,” wraps up Megan. “It doesn’t ever get old.”
Journalistically, the lack of intellectual inhibition these kids show and their determination to find out the nitty gritty of life in space genuinely impresses me. I’ll be channeling my inner teenager during my next interview, that much I know!
If you’re interested in some classic scenes of stress at Mission Control (following a problem with a Hubble bolt) check out the clip below.
Otherwise, if you’re in Albury on Wednesday the 19th, you’ve got the chance to see Megan talk for yourself! Very highly recommended, it’s a timelessly fascinating topic and her footage is fantastic. She’ll also be in several other Australian states over the next few days. See her itinery here.
Call me old fashioned, but astronauts are still cool. In fact, whenever I’ve seen an astronaut speak somewhere, I’ve always walked away amazed, and Megan was no exception.