AIAA ISS Panel On Thursday, 27 February 2014 at 6 pm the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Adelaide Section held the International Space Station (ISS) International Young Professionals Panel at the University of Adelaide, Engineering South room S112. The following summary is taken from notes I wrote during the presentation. The speakers spoke extraordinarily quickly so this is only a sampling of what was said. Hopefully I have not made that many errors. The room was in a lecture theatre with seating the same as when I went to university in the early 1980s. These are black seats with a black table that folds in front of you. Before the panel started, the left and right projection screens showed a video of several views from the ISS. It took me several minutes to work out the views. One looked to be from the Lab module looking at the airlock and another had a view of Soyuz from near the cupola. OK ladies and gentleman, my name is Mark Ramsey. Its a great pleasure to welcome you. The speakers are giving up some of their holiday time. There will be 15 minutes from each speaker. The first speaker is Andrea Boyd. She studied mechatronics at Adelaide University. She had been involved with the South Australian Space School, the Victorian Space Science Education Centre (VSSEC) and the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) creating their inaugural internship in Vienna. She spent a year on a cruise ship and has a language post graduate degree from the University of Rome. Ms. Boyd. This is what we call the six pack. This is views of ISS while at work. I work at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in payloads. My position is in Eurocom and ISS operations engineer. This is the ISS six pack. As great as normal engineering was, this is where I wanted to be. This is my first day of work in ISS operations training at EAC, Germany. There is free entry to visit any time for public and students. The ISS mission control centres are Space Operations Support Centre (SOSC) run by the Canadian Space Agency or Agence Spatiale Canadienne (CSA-ASC) in Quebec, Canada, Mission Control Centre Moscow (MCC-M), Columbus Control Centre (COL-CC), Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC), Mission Control Center Houston (MCC-M) and others. ISS Sovereignty consists of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Roscosmos, European Space Agency (ESA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and CSA-ASC. Russia has two robot arms. For ISS around the world, Houston is responsible for overall authority, safety, mission control and United States (US) systems. For grand data transfer and communications this is how it works in Europe. There are European User Support and Data Centres (USOC) such as N-USOC in Trondheim. There is Mission Control Munich. The typical ISS crew is three or six astronauts and cosmonauts. There is one commander and two to five flight engineers. Routine activities include payloads and their experiment execution, systems maintenance, working with the Public Affairs Office (PAO) and physical exercise. For ISS planning, Columbus module planning starts five years earlier. One to five years before is strategic planning and one to 30 months is tactical planning. There is the international planning mega integration which puts together all their plans. This is two weeks before we get the document. Daily operations are on an iPad. Orange and green areas are satellite coverage. Blue box areas are time critical. There are payload and resource allocation bands. You can get details of all the activities. Its optimised, super efficient and all completely synchronised. There is a 15 minute tag up of all the countries. Moscow talks a lot, so they put them at the end. This is every morning and evening. Its a summary of that. It works and its amazing. This is a step by step procedure. There are pop ups. We have voice loops. These include space to ground and flight directors. For the USOCs Ill be the voice of the European USOCs. You cant say yes or no. You say affirmative or negative. You can listen to a translation at all times. There is S-Band, Ku-Band and ultra high frequency (UHF) communications. S-Band includes voice and the command path. This is an overview of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system. A ground station is in White Sands, New Mexico. SOLAR is the payload Ive been working on. Its been up there for six years and will be there to 2017. It has a global view. TEM are next to us. There are live ISS displays. In the Daily Planet newspaper they had Cant you move the Space Station?. The European astronaut procedure includes an online application, psychology test one and psychology test two. There have been three calls for astronauts. In May 2008 they had a call. Luca Parmitano was the first one to go up. He had the water leak in the suit. Alex is going up in May. Hes like the Flash. There is him, Samantha and Tim. The astronauts include Samantha Cristoforetti, Alexander Gerst and Andreas Mogensen. Here is Lucas page with a selfie in an astronaut suit. There are amazing things we have in Oz. These include student aerospace groups for second year university students. There are conferences that first year students can attend. Its never too early to attend as students. There is the National Space Society of Australia (NSSA). The SGAC is a space network for 18 to 35 year olds worldwide and is free to join. There is the Space: Development Theory and Practice (SDTP) in Russia which is a Summer space school. You visit MCC-M. There is MARS2013 in Morocco directed from Austria. We have the National Space Policy from the Space Policy Unit (SPU). It happened finally after a lot of lobbying. There is the International Space University (ISU) Southern Hemisphere Summer Space Program (SHSSP). It was one of the Australian Space Research Program (ASRP) projects. What can I do at university? You can join the AIAA student group, attend conferences like the Australian Space Development Conference (ASDC) and Aerospace Futures (AF). You can volunteer and plan for your final year project. There is space work in Australia but it is fragmented. There are not a huge amount of positions. Space work in Europe is open to Australian citizens. They are even more open. All links to the talk can be found at bit.ly/174i5PI The presentation ended with a photo of the SOLAR experiment attached to Columbus. Mr. Ramsey. The second speaker is Kathleen Coderre. She works on the operations contract and joined from Rensselaer Polytechnic. She is an active participant in the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) where she is vice chair in the young professions program and a member of the AIAA. She is working on a masters program and is also a private pilot. Ms. Coderre. Hello everybody. Im here on holiday. Im with Lockheed Martin. I work on all of the applications that flight controllers use. Every time there is a change we make sure that it doesnt break it. We integrate all the new software and make sure we dont break it. I have three years of design experience. I worked on the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). On the ISS theme, here is the scale of the ISS. Im from the US so we compare it with an American football field. There are six crew. Two are from the US, one from Japan and three Russian. This is astronaut Rick Mastraccio who is an alumni of my university. He is involved with the Train Like an Astronaut program. I took Russian, but Im not good at it. Ms. Maria Kuleshova. They took up the Sochi torch. Ms. Coderre. This is the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES). One of the great things is all the research you can do. My boyfriend described this as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in space. It is an autonomous vehicle that can drive around. The Department of Defense performed experiments. In microgravity research there are vaccines. I can stand here for ages describing all the cool things. There is the Commercial Crew and Cargo Program (C3PO). I often get asked Has NASA closed? NASA is helping the design along. This is to stimulate the commercial space industry and make services available to government and to whomever. There are two things. There is Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) for cargo resupply with SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC). The astronauts love it. They bring fruit, vegetables and ice cream. SpaceX have been fairly successful lately. This is the general idea. This is the Boeing CST-100 capsule. They are doing all the design and development in Houston, Texas. It is similar to Orion. We have Dragon from SpaceX and DreamChaser from Sierra Nevada. So, whats next? There is the Exploration Flight Test One (EFT-1) mission. I worked on the electrical power system. This is what we designed to be operated later. If there was a problem, they need to be able to fix it. I also worked on the cockpit display. EFT-1 will launch by September or October this year. They are currently doing power-up testing and have the vehicle in Florida to have simulations. The trunk which provides power and water is called the Service Module. This is to be designed by ESA. Depending on how that goes, they could keep that design and have a permanent partnership. The neat thing is to take it up to a high orbit to simulate the heat of Lunar return. The commercial program frees up NASA resources for long duration human spaceflight. The plan is to use Orion to go to an asteroid. We are also considering Lunar missions. The end goal is Mars by 2035. We need really smart young engineers to get that done. A Mars mission is going to be expensive. Its exciting. I think its pretty cool. For US astronaut selection you need to have a degree. They require three years experience with a Bachelors. An advanced degree is desirable, but not necessary. A lot of astronauts are over achievers. You need to stand between 62 and 72 inches (157.5 and 182 cm). The astronaut selection time table is about every two years. They open it up for three months and go through applications for six to nine months. You have an interview. If you pass physicals you do panel interviews with flight directors and astronauts. They narrow down to around 50 people. You poor souls, youre going to have a physical and need to draw blood. There were nine astronauts selected out of the last class. You are considered astronaut candidates for the first two years. Some really cool links are Spot The Station and the NASA ISS Interactive Guide. There is more on US astronaut selection. You can follow NASA on Twitter and can get a lot of access. Ill show a cool picture. This is Sochi from the station. This gives an international perspective on station. Mr. Ramsey. Thankyou Kath. I need to be a master of Twitter. Maria Kuleshova studied where many other cosmonauts graduated. Students meet from all over the world. She worked on Baumanets 2 and is currently working for a German company. Ms. Kuleshova. Hello everybody. Were a bit tired as the girls talked a lot. Im here on holiday. This is on Russia in space. Here is Moscow, Sochi and St Petersburg. We are the first! You were the first on the Moon. Our achievements include the first satellite, first return flight with animals on board (Belka and Strelka) on 19 August 1960. Were the only country that can make spaceflights to the ISS. You go in a space vehicle for a few days. At the end you have a soft landing. The cosmonaut selection criteria. Initially you had to be between 70 and 72 kg and member of the communist party. You need to have Russian citizenship. Its a long long way. They still call you a cosmonaut after a few years. I worked in Russia on the orbital segment. You fly into space but dont meet in space. Its hard work in space. Here is Chris who played the guitar. You can go online and see what theyre doing there. They are giving online lessons. Why do we spend that much money on space? For space walks, the cosmonauts are very happy to go outside. They need to do everything on time. They take cool pictures or drink a beer. There are some awesome views on the way. Is it easy to be an astronaut? It takes three to five years to train. As soon as you are there, you need to train to come back. You dont really move around that much. You mostly use your arms to move and to train. You get very thirsty as its pretty warm. They have problems with their ears due to the noise. They have hearing problems. How do you train? You fly from one place to another. We have three neutral buoyancy laboratories. There is a centrifuge which they use for cosmonaut selection. How do you train? You train every day. You use these fancy pants. It is strange to run as you need to be attached. There is the International Youth Scientific School Space: Development, Theory and Practice. There are different lectures, tools and facilities. Youre in a team to work with different countries. There are 60 students. Its a unique chance. People are very different here in Australia. The schools in engineering are very different. I took a lot of pictures. Here is a normal lab room with an R-7 rocket. You can sit in a capsule model and look in the LK Lunar lander or Zond capsule. Here is a fuel tank. You can look inside and explore it. There is the rocket and space corporation Energia. You can visit their museum which have Gagarins and Tereshkovas capsules. This is the Zvezda Research and Production Enterprise. They make space suits. There is competition between Russia and the US. They have pants and jackets unique for each astronaut. In Russia you adjust it yourself. Here are some ejection seats. Here is the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre. This is like the Johnson Space Center (JSC). This is what it looks like. This is the Mir Space Station which is used by kids and the space school. The centrifuge is 80 m long which looks like a frog to me. Here is the MCC. The first time I was there I was so excited. You can ask your own question to the cosmonauts in the ISS. While asking the question, they flew through the whole of Europe. Its an amazing feeling. On FaceBook I wrote I had just talked to the ISS. Here is the Russian Air Force Museum where everything flies. You are surrounded by the most expensive umbrellas if it rains. There are lectures and discussions. You have a meeting with cosmonauts and astronauts. This includes the cosmonaut who spent the longest time in space. There is a rocket model class. After the rocket is done, you paint them. There is the team project. They give you an idea of what to do, for example build a zero gravity space station. Ms. Boyd. You have to do all the calculations. Ms. Kuleshova. For example how much power do you have? You have five days, but need 12. There is some fun as always. You need to be detailed. There is a scientific conference where you present your results. So you dont get much sleep. There is a cultural program which includes ballet and Red Square and Sergiev Posad excursions. Wanna join us? Go to ysc.sm.bmstu.ru/ The Youth Space Centre email is [email protected]. Mr. Ramsey. We now open the floor to questions. To Kath. Ive been wondering about the Space Launch System (SLS). What is the perception in the organisation? Ms. Coderre. We need heavy lift. Everyone has their personal opinion. There is office talk. This is what Congress tells us. SLS keeps a lot of people employed. They were using it for Constellation or Cancellation. All the work was thrown out. Ares and Saturn V had a paper. This should provide the lift we need. There is the politics, money and expertise to make it work. Why is their human interaction? Ms. Boyd. A lot of it is automated. Its run from the ground 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Thats what the bottom bands are for. Ms. Coderre. Some of that requires crew interaction. The Principle Investigators (PI) are from multiple universities. There was one guy who had been up for a year. [This was Valeri Polyakov who spent 437 days in a trip to Mir.] Is that dangerous? Ms. Kuleshova. When he was up there the Soviet Union broke up. They asked if he can stay up a little more. You are at 9 km, run for 10 km or more. He did it. Hes a great man and a nice guy. He came back. It took him a long time to recover. When you come back its physically difficult to walk. Hes now fine. Ms. Coderre. We have a mission planned for Scott Kelly and Gennadii Padalka for a one year mission in 2015. Padalka will then have the world record for most time spent in space. Weve been finding new things. There are problems with ocular pressure which is affecting vision. They are doing checks almost constantly and seeing this trend. Ms. Boyd. A cool thing is that there will be spare seats available. They had the problem with the leaking suit. How quickly did they respond? Ms. Boyd. They learned straight away as they are in constant communications. The big problem is that the water attaches to your face and you could drown. There was only one way to get in. He guessed by feeling. The guys were waiting inside. It was a ridiculously close call. Is there a problem with micro particles? Ms. Coderre. Weve taken some hits. The solar panels have taken hits. Ms. Boyd. There are collision avoidance manoeuvres (CAM). They hand over to MCC-M to do the manoeuvres. This effects experiments. They have two schedule versions. We dont want propellant to get into the spectrometers. Ms. Coderre. The crew can go into safe areas in ISS. Mr. Matt Hardy. They have Micro Meteoroid and Orbital Debris (MMOD) shields. What about dumping liquids overboard? Ms. Coderre. We dont do urine dumps. There is minimal venting. Ms. Boyd. We do some air venting. Most of it goes into the trash. There is one person to look after all the stuff. There is stuff that goes missing. It gets trashed and burned up. In the US there are International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) restrictions. How do you see ITAR restrictions affecting cooperation? Ms. Coderre. I hate ITAR. That has extended to spacecraft. Weve managed to build and operate ISS with ITAR. Any time you bring an international partner, you can show the interfaces. It increases costs. Some of those interfaces didnt work partly due to ITAR. You need citizenship or a Green Card. Ms. Boyd. You cant do any cool stuff. Come to Europe. Ms. Coderre. We made it work, but its not pretty. I worked on the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Ms. Kuleshova. When a cosmonaut first flew with Americans on the Space Shuttle, they didnt know what they could tell him. If something happens, you need to know everything. There was a lot of paperwork. Now its easier. Ms. Coderre. They are working on reforming it. Mr. Ramsey. Please head outside for pizza as a small token of our appreciation. Thanks for coming. (Applause from audience.)
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 05:12:52 +0000
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