Are We There Yet?

To crew, or not to crew, that is the question. Well, that’s the question NASA’s acting director Robert Lightfoot is proposing for the next Orion mission.

Orion is NASA’s next human spacecraft that will take astronauts beyond low earth orbit into deep space – first to places like cis-lunar orbit and ideally it will eventually go to Mars.

The next test flight of Orion is atop the  Space Launch System, SLS. Currently, it’s slated for a November 2018 launch but delays in hardware and certification threaten to push that back even further. The mission, Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) is an uncrewed flight to an orbit around the moon. It would be the first time a human-rated spacecraft will head to deep space sin the Apollo missions and it’s the first time the SLS will fly.

Despite delays and uncertainty, Lightfoot asked if there’s a chance the agency could get astronauts on this mission. NASA doesn’t have an answer yet.

Chris Gebhart is the Assistant Managing Editor at NASASpaceFlight.com and co-author of a piece looking at the possibilities of a crewed EM-1 mission. He joins the podcast to discuss three options for EM-1, and his best guess at what’s to come for the program.

Ralph Fritsche is a lot like Mark Watney. He’s growing potatoes in Martian regolith. And as we’ll find out, it’s harder than it looks.

Last episode, we learned about NASA’s Veggie experiment. Another experiment, the Advanced Plant Habitat, is heading up to the International Space Station in March. It’s a self-contained unit that allows even greater tweaking of space farming on the station and it’s the next step in unlocking the secrets to growing plants in space. In true NASA fashion, you’ll hear it referred to in acronym form during this episode: APH.

While engineers and scientists get ready to launch that experiment, Fritsche is busy working on the next steps – growing food on other worlds. He works with botanists here on earth to figure out what martians will plant, grow and eat when they get to the red planet.

Astronauts on the International Space Station are growing their own food. NASA’s Veggie experiment is figuring out how space travelers can have some of the comforts of home, like lettuce and cabbage, while also working to create a sustainable food source in space.

So how do you grow plants in space? NASA plant biologist Gioia Massa explains. 

As President Trump begins his term, he’ll appoint a new NASA Administrator. That new head of the public space program will steer NASA’s vision for space exploration. So where is it heading?

The Planetary Society’s Director of Space Policy Casey Dreier joins the program to recap Trump’s space policy and how Congress might implement it.

The Cassini spacecraft has been exploring Saturn since launching in 1997. Cassini gave planetary scientists incredible insight into the planet’s rings, it’s surface and moons. Now, the spacecraft is entering it’s final phase before crashing into the surface of Saturn.

 

UCF Professor and Planetary Scientist Josh Colwell has been working on the spacecraft since he started his career as a planetary scientist and Colwell’s research interest include studying the rings of Saturn.

Colwell joins the program to talk about the end of the Cassini mission, the rings of Saturn, and how understanding Saturn gives us a glimpse of the dawn of our solar system.

You can hear Colwell and his planetary colleagues talk more about all things astronomy on his podcast Walkabout the Galaxy.

George Takei is best known for his role as Sulu, helmsmen on the USS Enterprise during the show Star Trek. While the show only lasted 3 seasons, its legacy lives on, spawning multiple shows and movies within the franchise.

Today, Takei is an advocate for equality, space exploration and science education. And later this month, he’s visiting Rollins College.

But before he makes the trip to Florida, George took some time to chat with “Are We There Yet?” about Star Trek, science fiction, and equality in the 23rd century.

‘The Glass Universe’ explores how the women of Harvard Observatory in 1890 broke through the gender barrier and revolutionized the way astronomers observe the night sky.

Dava Sobel is a former New York Times science reporter and longtime contributor to The New Yorker. Her latest book, the Glass Universe, looks at the women at Harvard Observatory and how they were breaking ground not only because of their gender, but because of the scientific observations they were making in the field of astronomy.

It started with a space suit, a bit of imagination and a near-death experience.

After photographer Tim Dodd impulsively bought an old Russian space suit, he became the everyday astronaut. Now, his photo series brings the magic, humor and human aspect of space-flight to the masses. And he’s getting to visit some cool places along the way.

Find Tim’s photography online at www.everydyastronaut.com and check out his online store

 

A fleet of 8 toaster-oven sized satellites are heading to orbit with the task of seeing through rain. NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System will measure wind speeds in the tropics to better understand cyclones and hurricanes. And it does this in a pretty interesting way: using left-over GPS signals beamed down to earth.

Derek Posselt is a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California and he joins the program to talk about the mission and the technology that helps this fleet work.

John French wants to make people throw up. But don’t worry, it’s for science!

He’s a professor of Human Factors at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach Florida. He’s studying motion sickness, and the effects it has on astronauts. To do that, he makes his subjects sick by placing them in an optokinetic drum: a cylinder with a chair in the middle. The inside is painted with black and white stripes. The cylinder, or drum, then rotates around the subject and in a few minutes they start to feel the symptoms of motion sickness.

So how does this apply to space travel? And what other physiological challenges do humans still have to overcome to spend a long time in space? We take a trip to John’s lab to find out.