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Experiments Explained And Spacewalk Time-Lapse: SpaceX Polaris Dawn Crew's On-Orbit Event
Space.com
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16/11/2024
The Polaris Dawn crew Jared Isaacman, Scott "Kidd" Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon explain the experiments conducted during the mission. Also, see a time-lapse of Isaacman's spacewalk.
Credit: Polaris Dawn / edited by Space.com
Category
🤖
Tech
Transcript
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00:00
Hello, and welcome to the Dragon spacecraft.
00:06
You are here with the Polaris Dawn crew.
00:10
My name is Anna Menon.
00:12
I am one of the mission specialists and the medical officer for our mission.
00:16
This is Kid Poteet.
00:18
He is our pilot.
00:20
Jared Isaacman is our mission commander, and Sarah Gillis is our mission specialist.
00:26
And we are so excited to talk to you today about some of the science and research we
00:29
are doing on board here.
00:31
We have had a full complement of research, an action-packed schedule for this mission.
00:37
We have had about 40 science and research experiments that we have been tackling, and
00:42
they span all sorts of genres, and we are really excited to talk to you about a few
00:46
of them today.
00:47
So to kick us off, I will start telling you about some of the ones that I love.
00:55
So right here what you see, this is a butterfly ultrasound device, and it is really neat
01:01
because it can work with like an iPhone or an iPad or just any sort of like tablet device.
01:07
And so it is really portable, and you can take it anywhere, even to space.
01:11
And you are able to actually image all sorts of different pieces of the body and get really
01:17
good diagnostics through it.
01:19
So we have been using it for a whole bunch of different experiments, measuring our different
01:24
veins, we have been measuring our bladder, we have been measuring our like kidneys and
01:32
liver and a lot of different pieces of the body.
01:35
So it has been really interesting, and we are excited to see what we learn from all
01:38
the data.
01:39
And this right here is another type of ultrasound device.
01:42
This is a novel three-dimensional ultrasound, or the optic nerve sheath.
01:47
That is a portion of the eye, and what is really interesting about this is it gives
01:53
us insight into the fluid shifts and the eye issues that plague astronauts when they
01:57
go to microgravity.
01:59
And so scientists are really interested in the changes that happen to this optic nerve
02:03
sheath.
02:04
And this three-dimensional ultrasound is a brand new technology.
02:08
You can use it, and it gets you really efficient, good images of that sheath.
02:12
So hopefully we will learn a lot more about those vision changes.
02:15
And I will hand it over to Kit to take it from here.
02:20
Hi everybody.
02:21
So the two experiments that I really enjoyed participating in, first off, the LEO plant.
02:30
This was created by the U.S. Air Force Academy, which is near and dear to my heart.
02:34
I was assigned there many moons ago as one of the commanders of the cadets.
02:40
And what these cadets have created is a casing that holds different plants, and we have been
02:47
imaging these plants on a daily basis to see what the impact of zero gravity is on
02:53
this plant.
02:56
And then one other experiment that we completed today is an airway assessment.
03:04
So one of the big concerns is the fluid shift up here at zero gravity.
03:08
We can really feel the effect as soon as we were on orbit.
03:11
You can kind of see it in our faces.
03:13
So one of the concerns with long-duration spaceflight is to be able to triage in case
03:18
of an emergency.
03:19
And one of the first basic steps is airway assessment.
03:24
So we volunteered to do some imaging of our airway.
03:28
We did this experiment before flight, during flight, and then we'll do it post-flight.
03:34
And what this requires is us to numb up the nasal passage and then insert this endoscopic
03:42
camera all the way through the nasal passage and back of the throat to take these different
03:48
images.
03:49
And then post-flight, we'll be able to assess what happened to the airway passage as that
03:58
fluid shifts.
03:59
So those are two of the experiments I participated in, and I'll pass it off to our commander.
04:06
Hey, everyone.
04:12
So I'm pretty excited about this experiment right here.
04:15
This is a Tempest Pro, also called our ambulance in a box.
04:22
So if you believe in SpaceX's vision of making life multi-planetary, that we're going to
04:27
have thousands of starships in space someday, tens of thousands of people, we're on Mars
04:32
and we're exploring our solar system, it's pretty cool.
04:36
But those are some pretty long journeys, and hospitals aren't very close by.
04:40
So we have to be able to bring diagnostic tools into space with us and then be able
04:45
to beam that information back home to the flight surgeons.
04:48
So just yesterday, we hooked up all sorts of cables to this, so blood pressure, SpO2,
04:54
respiration, EKG leads, and basically we're able to capture a number of vital signs and
05:01
test it out.
05:02
And today, we actually did a full-blown medical simulation of what could be a very likely
05:07
medical situation that could develop after an EVA, and then was able to beam a lot of
05:13
this information home via Starlink to the flight surgeons in mission control.
05:17
So I really am excited about it because it's this kind of technology that's going to be
05:21
needed to kind of further humankind's ambitions to explore among the stars.
05:26
And I'll turn it over to Sarah, our mission specialist.
05:29
Hey, everyone.
05:32
So we've been doing, also, as Anna mentioned, a lot of research into spaceflight-associated
05:36
neuroocular syndrome.
05:38
And so I've got a couple of devices here, a Quixie, and – oop, floating away from
05:45
me – and a pupillometer here.
05:56
But we've been collecting data kind of every day, looking at the changes in our vision
05:59
over time in space.
06:01
We also have an experiment from CU Boulder that we did shortly after arriving on orbit,
06:08
where you actually put a contact lens into your eye to monitor the pressure change over
06:12
time.
06:13
And there's a picture of Jared.
06:16
He has a contact lens in his eye that's sending pressure data over 24 – 12, 24 hours
06:22
to a sensor, but he really looked like a rogue space pirate with his eye patch kind of covering
06:29
it, so he didn't have to have some vision changes from that lens, but it was quite a
06:34
look up here for the space pirate.
06:37
Awesome.
06:38
Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
06:43
That is just a brief insight into the wealth of science and research that we've been doing
06:50
up here.
06:51
We are so excited to gather as much data as we can for these scientists back on Earth
06:55
so that we can learn together and contribute to our collective future for the future of
07:00
human space exploration and on Earth as well.
07:03
So we'll talk to you soon.
07:06
Thanks.
07:07
Bye.
07:08
Stay checked.
07:09
Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a
07:17
perfect world.
07:19
Whoa.
07:21
Nice takeoff, ED-1 going to step into TESS Matrix 1.
07:29
Single-handed mobility demonstration.
07:33
Wow.
07:34
Commander Jared Isaacman now emerging from...
07:38
Copy review in TESS Matrix 1 watching from the nose cone.
07:40
down left and right are threes, pitch and roll are three, yaw is a two, switching, single
08:04
handed operation.
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8:06
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