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The International Space Station and Beyond

Season 1Episode 198Jun 4, 2021

NASA experts Robyn Gatens, Jennifer Fogarty, and Laura Shaw explore how the International Space Station has enabled scientific and technological advancement that has benefitted humanity on Earth and framed the future of space exploration to the Moon and then Mars. HWHAP Episode 198.

The International Space Station and Beyond

The International Space Station and Beyond

If you’re fascinated by the idea of humans traveling through space and curious about how that all works, you’ve come to the right place.

“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center from Houston, Texas, home for NASA’s astronauts and Mission Control Center. Listen to the brightest minds of America’s space agency – astronauts, engineers, scientists and program leaders – discuss exciting topics in engineering, science and technology, sharing their personal stories and expertise on every aspect of human spaceflight. Learn more about how the work being done will help send humans forward to the Moon and on to Mars in the Artemis program.

On Episode 198, NASA experts Robyn Gatens, Jennifer Fogarty, and Laura Shaw explore how the International Space Station has enabled scientific and technological advancement that has benefitted humanity on Earth and framed the future of space exploration to the Moon and then Mars. The panel discussion in this episode was recorded on December 1, 2020.

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Transcript

Pat Ryan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 198, “The International Space Station and Beyond.” I’m Pat Ryan. On this podcast we talk with scientists, engineers, astronauts, all kinds of experts about their part in America’s space exploration program. Today, we turn to look forward in time to the future of space exploration that the International Space Station is making a reality. Since before its first component launched from Earth in 1998, the major goals of the International Space Station have included supporting world class science research, creating benefits on Earth, promoting international cooperation, boosting the commercialization of space, and supporting the future of space exploration, which is to say, using the space station, flying close by in low-Earth orbit, to learn what we need to know so we can go back to the Moon and then to the big destination, to Mars. How to make use of this relatively permanent platform only a couple of hundred miles away in the sky to answer our questions about how to support people in space on journeys that will take years to complete. This is the sixth in a series of NASA-sponsored panel discussions in recognition of the 20th anniversary of continuous human presence on the station. We brought you the others starting in February. This time, a panel of NASA experts heavily involved in planning those future missions talks about what’s to come and how the partner space agencies around the world are leveraging today’s research to become tomorrow’s technology for the first human journey into the solar system. The moderator is NASA Public Affairs Officer Leah Cheshier from the Johnson Space Center, and she will introduce you to Robyn Gatens, Jennifer Fogarty, and Laura Shaw. OK then, here we go.

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Leah Cheshier: I’m Leah Cheshier, NASA public affairs officer. We’re excited to be with you today to discuss the International Space Station and beyond as we celebrate 20 years of continuous human presence on the station. So for the last 20 years, this unique microgravity laboratory has hosted more than 240 people from over 19 countries and over 3,000 experiments and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. This all helps pave the way for NASA’s human lunar exploration plans under the Artemis program. This will call for us to send the first woman and the next man to the surface of the Moon by 2024 and establish a sustainable exploration by the end of the decade. So, we have four panelists with us today to share their wisdom and experience about all things space station, and I’m going to let them tell you a little bit more about themselves. First up, we’ll start off with Robyn Gatens.

Robyn Gatens: Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. We’re excited to be joining you today on this panel. I’m Robyn Gatens and I have worked for NASA for 35 years, pretty much my whole career. I currently wear two hats for the agency. I’m the acting director for the International Space Station at NASA Headquarters. And I’m also what’s called the system capability leader for habitation systems. That includes environmental control and life support and crew health and performance systems, which we’re using, we’ll talk a lot more about, in this panel. We’re using the space station heavily to develop those capabilities. So, that’s it, that’s me, Leah.

Leah Cheshier: Thanks so much. And next up, Jennifer Fogarty.

Jennifer Fogarty: Hi. It’s a pleasure to be here and an honor to be on the panel. I am the chief scientist for the NASA Human Research Program. I have been with NASA 16 years in total, spent my career working, most of it, in medical operations, trying to understand the risks associated with spaceflight, and making sure that the crew members are healthy and have the countermeasures they need to be successful for mission requirements. When I moved over to the Human Research Program, I became in charge of a very large and diverse portfolio of research that is trying to enable human spaceflight exploration. And we use platforms such as the International Space Station to not only understand how the body changes over time and how humans respond to spaceflight, but then how do the tools that we introduce, like exercise countermeasures or nutritional countermeasures, help them really optimize their performance and health, and sustainably be able to manage the stressors that are going to occur for exploration missions, which we have not experienced yet.

Leah Cheshier: Thank you so much. And to round out our panel today, we have Laura Shaw.

Laura Shaw: Hello. As you’ve said, I’m Laura Shaw. I work in the International Space Station Program Office at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. I spent my whole career working ECLSS, life support systems, environmental control and life support [system]. And so, now we’re establishing a test bed onboard the International Space Station, as Robyn mentioned, to test out those technologies. And so we’ll talk a little bit about my role in that, which is to create this test bed and all the hardware that goes into it. And I’ve been at NASA about 22 years or so and worked life support almost that entire time.

Leah Cheshier: Awesome. Well, thank you all so much for joining us. Without further ado, let’s dive into some questions. The first one is for you, Robyn. You’ve said before that the best is yet to come, and we are on the cusp of some huge payoffs from our investment in the International Space Station. So, can you elaborate on that?

Robyn Gatens: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been talking a lot about this anniversary that we’re celebrating, 20 years of continuous human presence on the International Space Station, which is just an amazing accomplishment all by itself. Our team makes it look easy, but, in fact, it’s not, to sustain the International Space Station and continuous crew. As we look back on that, that amazing accomplishment in the last two decades, we’re really looking forward: we’re looking forward to what the next decade holds for the International Space Station. And in all of our mission areas, I feel like we’ve already accomplished so much but the best really is yet to come. So, we’ll be talking more today, and the focus of this panel is on how we’re using it, the space station, for exploration. And we have all these capabilities that require the International Space Station as a test bed to close these gaps for future missions. We’re going to be closing gaps coming up. We’re also going to be doing more cutting-edge research in medical fields, manufacturing, all kinds of, for benefit to life here on Earth, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) activities, all of those. The international partnership, by itself, is, I think, you know, as you mentioned, we have all these countries participating. We’re up to 108 countries have participated in some way in activities on the International Space Station. And so, we’re filling in the map, right, of global participation in this amazing platform. We’re also seeing more countries want to send astronauts into space. And then our final area, commercialization. So, we’re trying to enable a commercial economy in low-Earth orbit. We’re opening up the space station for private astronauts to come for the first time. And all commercial activities. We’ve got 21 commercial facilities now on the International Space Station, owned and operated by private industry. We’re about to launch the Nanoracks airlock on SpaceX-21, adding yet another commercial capability. So, that’s why I say, I think the best is yet to come. We’re about to really reap the benefits of, in all of these mission areas from the International Space Station.

Leah Cheshier: That’s really exciting. And thank you so much. The next question is really for any of you, maybe even all three of you. How are we currently using the space station to enable future exploration?

Robyn Gatens: Jen, you want to take that one first?

Jennifer Fogarty: Yeah, it’s been an exciting opportunity. Several years ago, when they completed station from a construction standpoint, but as you heard from Robyn, it’s still going to continue to evolve and changes as a test bed, but we also were able to get enough crew up there where we could focus significantly on science. And one of the components of science, not the only, but one of the components is human research, to really characterize what happens with the human body over time. Spaceflight has some stressors associated with it, but it also has some absence of stress. So, one of the big ones we try to understand is the body not experiencing gravity for significant periods of time. And the human body, we’ve discovered, is incredibly adaptable, but we’re trying to understand where does that adaptation take you, for periods of time that are longer and longer than what we experienced on station. So, you use something like station and the powers of the national lab that are there, plus the up- and down-mass, the capability to bring samples down, send hardware up and bring samples down, to do more detailed studies over time, it’s called time course, because what’s important about looking at change over time is your ability then to predict for future time periods that haven’t occurred yet, and build that confidence that you know where the system is going. So, I think the station has just been remarkable with allowing us to look at multiple crew members at a time, men and women, people of different ethnicities, to really get a comprehensive sense of what people of the future might be looking at and how would we help them survive, and not just survive but really perform to the missions standards that we expect for something like a three years’ Mars mission. So, it’s one of our many analogs, but it’s our most high-fidelity analog, because it is space operation.

Leah Cheshier: All right, coming up next, we actually have a question. I think this one might be for you. What have we learned from human research on the space station that is preparing us for the missions to the Moon and Mars?

Jennifer Fogarty: Well, for the missions of the future coming up, in the near term, for, especially for the Moon, I think it was allowing us really to position ourselves to learn how to do human subject research in a very constrained environment. There’s also risks associated with doing research. So, we’re always balancing, enabling the mission to occur, and doing research on subjects, but we have to remember that it is field research. So, when people are going to go into space and go to a planetary surface, understanding how they perform on something like an extravehicular activity is part of what we have to understand when they go even further away. So, I think it’s a learning opportunity for the scientists in just executing the science on those missions, as much as it is the data that’s going to come back, but the data really is invaluable. One of the questions we have about microgravity, which is primarily the situation on the International Space Station, is the body, I call it like one of the most energy-efficient machines known to man, in terms of, it will stop investing in systems that you don’t regularly use. So, I think what’s probably pretty well known about spaceflight is you do lose some bone and muscle mass while you’re in spaceflight because your body doesn’t feel the pull of gravity, so your body doesn’t invest in it. And it’s not very hard work, physically, to live in microgravity. Right? You don’t have to, there’s no weight to things. There’s mass, but you’re not lifting your own body or you’re not lifting an object, your kind of just moving it around and making sure it doesn’t get away from you, but it’s technically not very demanding on the musculoskeletal system. So, you say over time we’re going to take people to a planetary surface. So, in the concept of the lunar orbiting capability, we’re going to go to the lunar surface, which has a partial gravity. So, the question has been, what value is going to a planetary surface from the human standpoint of getting exposed to some level of gravity that’s not quite one, what we experience here on Earth? And we have ways on Earth of modifying centrifuges and putting people in an analog situation, which is called bed rest, to decondition them, but we’re always concerned like how much do we really replicate the actual experience of spaceflight. So, these opportunities of using combinations of learning about how microgravity changes the body, but then when we go to lunar how does that compare and how long do they stay in lunar orbit in microgravity, and then when they go to the surface. So, there’s a lot of, call it like triangulation of the data to look at, do we see differences in how the people decondition or not when you have a partial gravity capability present? But that’s where we try to tie in what we do on Earth, what we do in low-Earth orbit, and then what we’re going to do in lunar, and make sure we’re always evaluating the data to say, I think Robyn used the word gap earlier, what are our gaps in knowledge? And then where do we actually know we have problems that we have to go solve and test solutions? So, there’s just different, kind of, approaches along the way, but we really have to make sure that it’s an evidence-based process and we’re always reevaluating the data to tell us where to go next.

Leah Cheshier: Fantastic. So, let’s switch gears a little bit. We’ve been talking about the human side. And let’s talk a little bit about the environmental control side. So, we know environmental control and life support are essential for all human spacecraft. And on the space station, we have the ECLSS, or Environmental Control and Life Support System, that’s our, that’s our acronym for our big long string of words. So, how has that evolved in the last 20 years? And how will we apply the knowledge we’ve gained from that to those future missions to the Moon and eventually Mars?

Laura Shaw: I can take this question. When ISS first began, we first had astronauts onboard 20 years ago, we had a very basic ECLSS system. For example, we had a pressurized atmosphere, obviously, for the crew to breathe, and we removed carbon dioxide but we brought up oxygen in tanks, we brought up water in bags or we transferred it from the space shuttle. So, we were in that state until about 2008. That’s the point where we brought up our, what we call a regenerative ECLSS systems. And these are the recycling systems. So, we started collecting crew’s urine and, you know, converting that into drinking water. We started generating oxygen from that water. We no longer had to bring these really heavy consumables from the ground. And that’s already, and that’s saved millions of pounds of upmass, we call it, to the ISS. So, we’ve, not only have we saved that upmass, we’ve learned a lot about these systems. And some of it has been painful, some of it has been very challenging, because these systems are all connected. When, let’s say, we have a little contaminant that comes through the water system, that’s going to go into the oxygen generator, and that’s going to potentially negatively affect it. So, we have learned about these interactions between those systems. And also, Dr. Fogarty said, the human’s a little bit different in microgravity than they are on the ground, and we’ve learned about that as well, and what impacts that has to the ECLSS systems. For example, we talked about the muscle mass and the bone mass loss. That results in extra calcium being shed and entering the crew’s urine. Well, that affects our systems. We learned a lot about that particular one really early on in our, in our system test. So, we’re taking all of the knowledge we’ve gotten over the last 12 years with these systems, really 20 years for the whole of the ECLSS system, and we’re applying them to upgrades, to evolving it to the next step, to make things even better, either more capable of handling the environments that we’ll be in, or more reliable. That’s a big one, because the ECLSS system requires a lot of consumables and spares, because things wear out, pumps wear out over time. So, focusing on improved reliability is a significant part of what we’re trying to do. And ISS is an incredibly unique, and in fact, it’s unique in the, in the, in our solar system at least, as far as a test bed, where we can combine the microgravity, obviously, is a key, we can combine that with the crew being exposed to the microgravity and the waste products that they give off, and the closed loop spacecraft environment where, you know, if you’re breathing out things, those are in the atmosphere and they’re not going to get, you can’t open the window and then flush them out. You know? They’re there, and you have to deal with them. So, what we’re doing is we’re creating, is exploration class life support test bed, on the ISS, where we’re upgrading our existing systems and we’re supplementing them with new systems that will close the loop, we call it. So, you know, we’ve got this, this loop of carbon dioxide coming out, being recovered, the urine being recovered, and that water goes through the oxygen generator, etc., and there’s a loop there. We’re closing that loop to make it where we don’t need as many consumables as we needed on ISS. And that’s only going to help us for a Mars roundtrip mission. So, it’s very exciting, and it’s a one of a kind opportunity that we’re really taking advantage of.

Leah Cheshier: Yeah, absolutely. The best place to test it is in space. And I think it’s very interesting, I didn’t know that we were still sending up water up until 2008. That’s very interesting.

Laura Shaw: We still send water today. We get about 90% of our water recycled right now. We’re hoping to get to 98%, 99% with our upgrades that we’re currently working on.

Robyn Gatens: Next year.

Laura Shaw: Next year, yep.

Robyn Gatens: Next year we’re going to close that gap.

Laura Shaw: Yep.

Robyn Gatens: And I will just add on to what Laura said, that water recycling system enabled us, really, to go from a crew of three to a crew of six and now seven that we have on the International Space Station today, because of that, we cut that resupply need in half. And what does that mean? That means more crew can do even more research. And so, that’s just had a huge payoff.

Leah Cheshier: Yeah, absolutely. And more research means more benefits to humanity as well. So, we know there are considered five hazards to human spaceflight. We’re looking at radiation, isolation and confinement, the distance from Earth, gravity fields, and hostile or closed environments. So, what are some of the countermeasures in place to combat these five hazards?

Jennifer Fogarty: Yeah, and as hazards, we do break down on a, on a, on a per risk basis, but I always remind folks, the human is going to experience those hazards pretty much simultaneously. The International Space Station does have all present to a degree, and we’re trying to understand the difference between, say, the plan for exploration versus ISS to know what space we still have to work on. And there are modifications being made to ISS with that in mind, as well as the lunar opportunity, but right now, you know, we use predominantly exercise for the microgravity, the altered gravity hazard. Right? We’ve got to reload the body in some way, we’ve got to make it work hard. And going back to both Laura and Robyn’s points, really when you think about the human in this loop, it’s called human system integration. Like how is the human going to affect the vehicle? How does the vehicle affect the human? And the cyclic nature of that. So, if we can load the skeleton, we can make the bones and muscles work regularly and keep the body performance ready and healthy, and there is a psychological component to exercise as well as physical, but then maybe we’re less of a burden on the urine recycling system. Can we kind of meter out how the calcium is lost? There’s also the nutritional side. How do you feed a body and prepare for the waste that’s produced when you feed a body that’s exercising a lot? So, we have to kind of understand all of the inputs and outputs of both the human and the vehicle system to come up with a solution that says it works for everyone. You know? And it’s something that we think we can inform how future vehicles should be built, what did we learn from it. So, I think that human system integration has really come a long way with understanding how we impact each other, and maybe how we trade-off what we need to do and the good solutions. The space radiation is interesting. We definitely get galactic cosmic rays, which is a very different type of radiation than we experience here on Earth, but we also have a looming hazard, known as the Sun, that puts out some solar events. And those are solar particle events that we even experience here on Earth that may get through that protective part of our atmosphere called the magnetosphere. And those are all, you know, significant potential health risks. Right? I think it is scary and it’s pretty well known that radiation, to a large extent, is not your friend. It can be used therapeutically at time, under very careful, you know, guidance from physicians and scientists, but, in general, it’s something that we know really damages your body on very different levels. Cellular levels, even genetic levels, like damage to DNA. So at this point, there is a level of shielding, you know, actual aluminum that can come between the human and the radiation. Another thing that you can do is reconfigure, and I think Laura brought up the water bags, that can be an amazing radiation shield. So, depending on the type of event, which are pretty rare, the crew can shelter in place and use physical stuff around them to protect them. Galactic cosmic rays are actually really hard to shield from. And when you shield yourself from them, you can have what’s called a secondary, because the particle has to come through a material and it becomes something else. And those are equally as problematic. So, people are, the physicists and the vehicle designers are always trying to understand, you know, how do we get an optimal amount of shielding to protect the human and the equipment, because computers and boards in computers are actually susceptible to radiation damage as well, that how do we protect things without causing more of a problem downstream? So, from a biology side, where you look at the DNA damage in humans, and try to understand what that means for their health, the galactic cosmic rays at the level at which station is in our atmosphere don’t represent an immediate health impact, but we also surveil the astronauts for their lifetime, you know, that they agree to, to say, do we think things are happening to you later in life because of the time you spent in space. That also helps us gauge kind of how you accrue damage and how your body repairs it, and we have a variety of scientists working on these areas, for something like exploration missions where they will be gone for two to three times the duration, and they’ll be deeper into space and potentially be more vulnerable to the exposures. You mentioned isolation and confinement. And that is where we really try to understand a lot of the psychological stress that might go on. There are a lot of benefits in station that the crew talk about. There’s a lot of public literature out there. There was an experiment called Journals by Dr. Jack Stuster where the crew members wrote about their experience. And those writings were taken and kind of broken down into categories and a lot of metrics were done. But overall, the most positive experience crew members have is being able to see Earth from station and feel connected back to planet Earth. And so, what you start to understand when they talk about these strong connections to Earth, and some of it has to do with, say, telephoning via satellite phone, and having almost real time access to another human being, is that with exploration that’s not going to be present. So, then we try to understand, well, when those things aren’t around, how much more of a stressor will the isolation of the future be? And we can kind of gauge percentages based on how the crew talk about them now. There’s also the element of team. And Robyn just mentioned, they’re up to seven crew onboard, and that fluctuates depending on how vehicles bring people up and down. They can go anywhere from three to five to six to seven, depending on the crew swap-out, but these people have to get along. And they have to work together and live together 24/7 for some period of time. A lot of that goes into training and setting expectations of what the mission is and how people experience life together before they even go, but some of it has to do with diversity. And the idea is we do have crew changeover now that there are, the crew moved through station on different intervals. And in exploration, the four to six people you might be going with are going to be the four to six people you’re going to be staying with for a while. So, we also use station to understand the contribution of things like team dynamics, the diversity of the team, the changeover of the crew, then say, if we could quantify those contributions when they’re not present, what do we have to do with exploration mission, or how much differently do we have to prepare? Hostile and closed environment actually speaks, and we probably should change the name, because I think, I think the environmental control and life support people work really hard at making it non-hostile, but the humans don’t help themselves, because I mentioned exercise earlier as a countermeasure for the musculoskeletal system, but when you’re exercising, you pump out a lot of CO2. So, suddenly, the equipment has to go from say, some baseline level of CO2 of six people working and breathing, which may be kind of the amount we’re producing now, watching the panel or talking on a panel, and then when your heart rate goes up to 160 beats per minute and you’re breathing heavily, you’re producing a lot of CO2. And now the system has to accommodate that and try to bring the CO2 down. And then, I’m sure Robyn and Laura can very much speak to how the issues are of ventilation, because we, there’s differences in how air flows in microgravity, and that’s something we’ve learned on station a lot about. And the crew members might be locally experiencing a very different environment than what the global measurements might tell you. So, we’re actually trying to understand, again, that interaction between the ability to move air, ventilate, and then remove the CO2 when a crew member is doing something like breathe heavily due to exercise or hard work. And that actually is another lesson learned that we apply to extravehicular activities, where the human is in a very confined vehicle called an EVA suit. So, it’s been interesting that I try to understand the dynamics of how much humans produce, how the vehicle or the system removes it, and can it keep up with the person, because the person’s production could be highly variable depending on what you ask them to do. The other hazards that are out there have more to do with, I think, the concept of how do we meet the needs when you’re essentially trying to take a planet with people, and it has to do with sensory issues, like smell, feeling of things like a breeze or your feet in the grass, which are incredibly hard to replicate. And so far for station we’ve been at durations of missions that haven’t really approached having a problem with that, because people are going to come back to Earth and experience those things, and they can anticipate that time. But in the future exploration, you’re going to have longer and longer stretches where you can’t anticipate having those things you might really miss. And we’re trying to understand how much you have to replicate those components versus when you can just allow the person to know that you will get it eventually. And so, we, we try to understand, again, quantitatively as best you can, what it means to not have that sensory stimulation, but it’s one of the areas that crew members also remark much about when they come back is, especially right now, you see them land in Kazakhstan, they open their helmets, and they’re like, there’s nothing like the smell of the Earth. And I think our ability to grow vegetables and plants on orbit start to approximate that, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet because we’re not bringing soil, that comes with some other hazards and probably ECLSS challenges, if we were to bring more particles. But if there’s a way to combine the idea of feeding the crew by growing vegetables, contributing to something like oxygen production, CO2 removal, and then, if they also get texture, taste and smells that remind them of Earth, would be a huge countermeasure moving forward. And then, it’s just about sizing it properly and making it practical to do on something like exploration.

Robyn Gatens: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say…oops, kind of echo, chime in and say, is we, I think, developed very good countermeasures for the International Space Station, and we’ve learned about all these things. But now, we’re trying to refine those, so that they work for, say, a mission to Mars. For example, on space station today, we have three big exercise devices. And that’s a lot to carry on a trip to Mars. So, can we develop an exercise system that is smaller but the same effectiveness for the human? Same thing with the food system. We fly 200 different menu items right now to the space station. The crew enjoys a wide variety of food. That’s probably not going to be practical for a trip to Mars. And not all of those foods will survive, have the shelf stability to survive. that kind of a trip. So, it’s going to be a more limited food system. Can we introduce variety through other means? Can we introduce variety through, as Jennifer mentioned, a supplemental crop system, right, that maybe won’t have soil, it will grow plants a different way? And then, you know, the ventilation we mentioned, we’re working on our exploration ECLSS system that Laura talked about. One of the goals we’ve got for ourselves is to try to lower the CO2 or increase the performance of that system so that the CO2 levels that the crew is experiencing are lower. And we’re trying to understand what is that sweet spot, because when you try to do that the equipment gets bigger, so it’s a trade-off between designing the equipment for better performance and, and, you know, not being too big. Right? So, we’re, we’re using the space station to evolve into what we think is a more Mars-like or long-duration kind of mission-like system, and then understand that, through testing it with the crew.

Leah Cheshier: Great. Thank you so much. And so, we’ve talked a lot about the space station and about the environmental control systems on the space station. I would love to hear a little bit more about the challenges we’re facing when it comes to life support systems, and spacesuits even, needed for deep space exploration.

Laura Shaw: And I can start this one. Imagine you were going on a roundtrip from New York to Los Angeles in a car. Imagine that car was the size of a human hair. That’s what a Mars mission is. Imagine you have never taken that car, you’ve only ever tested it or driven it on a track inside a building; that’s kind of what we’re talking about if we, if we only test these things on the ground, for example. So, imagine you’ve never experienced a hill or rain or a pothole, and you don’t have any gas stations or service stations between, between there and back, right, and there’s no hotels to stop. Everything you have with you is what you have, and your wits and all of that. So, the biggest challenge, I think from a life support point of view, is the long duration and having to basically be your own mechanics and your own, you know, your own Mr. Fix its and Ms. Fix its. So, we’re doing everything we can, like I said, to learn as much as we can about these systems now, so that we’re smarter going forward. And we know what to bring as well. And Robyn mentioned, like in situ manufacturing is a significant capability we probably need to create, so that we can fix a problem that we haven’t anticipated along the way. And I think, and maybe Robyn can speak to the spacesuit challenges a bit, spacesuits are basically small spacecrafts. They have their own thermal control and life support systems in them. So, it’s very similar type of challenges. And then, of course, they’re going to have to deal with surface-related challenges when we start, you know, having crew going out on the Moon and Mars regularly. They’re going to bring in all kinds of dust, which we’re going to have to manage. So, I would say, they’re very similar and the good news is on the surface you have gravity, and we have gravity on Earth, so you can do some of those tests here on the ground, but for life support, we just have to do it on the space station.

Robyn Gatens: And we just flew a piece of the new spacesuit, the spacesuit evaporator, as a technology demonstration. And we’re doing that right now on the space station. So that will be part of our exploration suit. Building off of what Laura said, we, when we first flew our ECLSS system for space station we thought we understood it. Right? We thought we knew when this part would fail and how long this piece would last. And we were, we were wrong in many cases. If we had tried to do a mission to Mars back then, we would have guessed wrong. We would have taken the wrong things, too many of this, not enough of that, and we would not have had a successful mission. We, or we would have had to take a lot more stuff. Right? So, what we’ve learned over the last two decades with our ECLSS system, has actually reduced that uncertainty. And we can quantify that improvement in terms of spares mass now that we calculate we would need for our ECLSS system for a roundtrip to Mars. And we’ve been able to reduce uncertainty in terms of spares mass equivalent to several tons. And that’s huge. When you calculate just the weight of the stuff and then the weight, and then the mass of propellant you need to push the stuff on a trip to Mars and back, it’s a game changer for a mission to Mars, but we’re not done yet. We think we can bring that down even more, and that’s the reliability improvements that Laura talked about that we’re making today to our systems. But we also need time; we need time on systems. So we’ve learned, you know, we’ve reduced that uncertainty, but it took us a long time to get to that point. So, now we’re flying these evolutionary systems, and we need additional time on the space station to gain the knowledge and be confident in those systems so that we know, when we do take that trip, we pack the right stuff.

Leah Cheshier: Thank you so much. So, we’ve talked about life support system on a station a lot. And another part of the Artemis program, you know, we want to put the first woman and the next man on the Moon, but another part of that is Gateway. So, can you tell us a little bit about Gateway and maybe what the life support system will look like there as well.

Robyn Gatens: So, for Gateway, we are working on the initial pieces now. And it will be, initially, a limited, I would say, additional life support capability. We’ll be flying Orion, so the crew will always have the Orion life support system to rely on while they’re attached to Gateway. And then we’ll be augmenting what’s in Orion with additional capabilities on the Gateway, so that they can stay for longer stays. So, we’ll build it up. Initially, there will be 30, kind of, 30-day stays at Gateway, leading up to maybe 45, 60-day stays. Then, our international partners are bringing in additional habitation module with additional ECLSS capabilities, our European and Japanese colleagues. And then, ultimately, our plan is to bring a Mars habitat module to the Gateway. And that will really have all of our long-duration, regenerative life support systems that we’re flying to the International Space Station today and testing on the International Space Station. And that’s where all that stuff will be. And we’ll practice again at the Gateway with our full-up system there.

Leah Cheshier: So, the International Space Station is truly a global collaboration. You know, we talked about we’ve had, you know, over 240 people from 19 countries and thousands of researchers who have contributed to the work that’s been done on station. So, how has working with these other countries to keep the space station operational for 20 years with humans aboard informed our plan for working with international partners on the Artemis missions?

Robyn Gatens: Well, it says we can’t do it alone. Right? We’ve relied on this partnership, which is amazing, to do what we’ve done on the International Space Station and still do. I think even when our countries don’t get along necessarily on Earth very well, we get along very well in the International Space Station program. And that’s, that’s an incredible thing to say. And we’re taking that partnership with us and building on it to do these missions beyond low-Earth orbit together, because we know that we need contributions from everybody. No, nobody can do this alone. It’s too massive, it’s too expensive, and our international partners want to be with us on this journey. They really want to contribute and they’re excited about contributing. So, we’re extending what we learned on station now to Artemis, and signing agreements and really looking forward, everybody’s starting to work on their parts, and really looking forward to those milestones.

Leah Cheshier: Yeah, great point. I totally agree, we cannot do it alone, we are our best when we work together. So, I would love to hear from each of you, what you think human spaceflight will look like 20 years from now?

Robyn Gatens: I’m going to let Jennifer start. [Laughter]

Jennifer Fogarty: Twenty years from now, two decades, it seems so far away, but in 20 years, I’ll be like, wasn’t that, wasn’t that yesterday? When did this happen? I completely agree that it will continue to be an international collaboration. I definitely see a sustained lunar orbit and lunar surface presence. That is going to be our next big learning opportunity to safely go to Mars. We are surprised every time at what, you know, it’s the I don’t know what I don’t know, you know, gets you. And you really have to engage. Right? This is why everything we’ve learned on Earth in terms of exploration said, you have to go and fail, and hopefully fail safely, in terms of you anticipated it, and you learned from it. We have lots of ways to recover from the good type of failure right now. We can put ourselves in a low-risk posture to take those chances. And I think the lunar opportunities in the next two decades are really going to put us in a position to do Mars well. I think the capability of the human functioning and performing in lunar orbit and lunar surface activities is only going to be improved. You know, you mentioned the suit and there’s a lot that has evolved about the suit with respect to how the human functions. It is another vehicle, but it’s as close to you as your skin. Right? And it also, we’ve learned a lot about how it needs to move with you and not against you. It shouldn’t be more work. You know, we’re humans, we use tools to help us. And the suit essentially becomes an extension, like exoskeleton-like. The other ideas of being a good partner, going back to human system integration. One of the things that kind of got touched on, I didn’t mention as a countermeasure, because I, I really run a program that’s designed not to rely on something like pharmaceuticals, and not because there’s anything wrong, we’re going to have them to some extent, but because the idea is when you metabolize a pharmaceutical or a food, it goes into your urine or your waste and then has to be processed. And when you’re recycling water, you have to pay attention to that full life cycle. So, we want to stick with things that are the least burden on the other systems, and then know and anticipate what the human is expected to do. The other element is that we’re going to continue to increase the diversity of the people who go. Right? The idea of who is capable and what they’re capable of, I think we continually make sure to remind people that there really are no limits. Our jobs are to help facilitate almost anybody to go. It’s about what skill you bring to the table, what uniqueness you bring to the table. And we have only added value by adding to the diversity of the people who go and their perspectives and their expertise. So, I just see more women and increasing number of countries, representatives from all kinds of countries, being capable of flying with us and adding value to the missions in the future. Thanks for the opportunity for the question, because it’s good to step back and think about the future like that, instead of the next five years.

Robyn Gatens: Laura, what do you, what do you see in 20 years?

Laura Shaw: I am really hoping that we are on our way to Mars in 20 years. I’m hoping we’ve had a couple of missions by then and learned all kinds of things along the way. But I agree, I think the Moon is a good steppingstone and an area to, you know, go further away where it’s still not so far that we can’t learn those lessons and still relatively easily recover. So, I guess that’s my vision. That’s probably as far as my career will go. So, I’m really hoping by then, we’ve got, we’ve got people going, doing the Mars roundtrip.

Robyn Gatens: And I, you’ll be, you’ll still be at NASA, I’ll probably be retired by then, [laughter] but, yeah, I hope we are on Mars, too. I would just add, don’t forget about LEO as we go farther. I think as the administration, their policy, our policy, Congressional policy, I think we’re all in agreement is we, we have to maintain a presence in low-Earth orbit, too, even as we go further. The trick is how do we do that efficiently. So, we, it makes me sad to say this, but one day we’ll have to retire the ISS. And, but we want to transition to something. Right? We want to transition to commercial platforms in low-Earth orbit where we’re buying what we, NASA, need and other countries and buy what they need, there’s commercial activity, we’re all in it together. And so, that’s what I picture for LEO in the next 20 years. It’s hard to pick a timetable because development of commercial capabilities is, you know, it’s hard to predict, but we’re trying to do all we can to enable that future and keep that ISS going so we don’t have a gap when the time comes to transition. So, I really see and hope for that commercial partnership, both in LEO and in our efforts beyond LEO, as well as our international partnership.

Leah Cheshier: Yeah, that’s great. Thank you so much. I’m glad you brought up LEO, low-Earth orbit, you know, and that is a sad thought, you know, the day we might have to say goodbye to the space station, but this conversation has just shown the ways that it’s contributed to, you know, our future exploration. And just some of those facets. And, of course, the whole time, the International Space Station has really been benefiting everyone on Earth as well. So, before we wrap things up, I wanted to give everyone an opportunity, if you have any more thoughts or comments that you wanted to share before we ended up today.

Robyn Gatens: I don’t really have any. I just appreciate the opportunity. I love doing the celebration of our 20th anniversary and thinking about everything the space station has brought us. It’s been my whole career pretty much. So, it’s near and dear to my heart. I intend to keep working on it and keep, I really, really want us to fulfill all the potential we can out of this amazing platform in all areas. So, I think we’re really doing that. And excited to share that with everybody who might be watching.

Laura Shaw: I couldn’t agree more. I also liked what Dr. Fogarty said about the diversity of crew. I think also on the ground, all the, the folks that support NASA, you’ll notice a huge insurgence of women in the technical fields. In fact, this is an all-female panel, for example, today. And I think that’s really increased the, the diversity of thinking, you know, and the way we’re able to achieve things. My boss is a woman. And, you know, Robyn’s one of my bosses. And, anyway, I’m just very privileged to have some very strong ladies in the field. So, it’s a great thing. Thank you.

Jennifer Fogarty: Yeah, I agree with everything that has been said. And I, you know, working for the space program, it is an amazing opportunity to be part of the present and the future. It’s also, as a woman and coming up through STEM fields and some male-dominated fields, you’re like, if I can be there to be an advocate and help demonstrate what it looks like to do the role and do the job and be successful, and nobody even notices anymore, you know, because you are seamlessly accepted as part of the, as part of the team. And you bring solutions and you bring value. I’m incredibly proud of being part of the International Space Station. That has been present my whole career. I started after 2000. It was remarkable to see it evolve, and the way the facility operates today and how we continue to use it as a test bed. And I agree with Robyn, it will continue to be a workhorse for us from all kinds of learning opportunities, science, tech demonstration. It only gets harder to go further away, right, and you want to have a lot of confidence and certainty and buy down certain risks before you move to the next step. So, I think it’s really set up quite an elegant way for us to move forward and have a test bed. You know, Laura talked about, we can try to do things on the ground, but it’s still going to leave some open questions about will it work in space. You’ve got to go into the operational realm to really put it through its paces, but you don’t want to put humans at risk and the mission at risk for it. Right? It becomes, the job is to go test things and not switch yet, you know, to the next. People say, “well, why aren’t you doing the cutting edge?” I was like, well, cutting edge is risky. And, you know, Robyn mentioned the word reliable. You don’t know it’s reliable. You need time. Some things are just about run time on it. So, it’s an invaluable resource that will continue to function in that capacity. I think engaging in commercialization is an amazing opportunity, and people that see value in it and be part of understanding what commercialization could mean, but it’s been a privilege to work in the arena and to be part of having colleagues, you know, that are just stellar. We’re not here for any other reason than to enable the future. So, it’s really a privilege. And I thank you for being on the panel. It was really great to hear from my colleagues.

Leah Cheshier: Yes, thank you all so much. It was an honor to speak with all of you. And I know it’s just so exciting to reflect on the past 20 years, and ultimately exciting to look forward to what’s coming next for the International Space Station and as we journey further into the solar system.

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Host: It was more than 20 years ago that the first long-term human inhabitants of the International Space Station floated aboard that vehicle. And there have been people living on that spaceship every single day since then. No, not the same people, of course, but there has not been even one day in that time that humans have relinquished this permanent toehold off of our home planet. And in these special panel discussions we’ve shared with you in the past couple of months, episodes 184, 187, 189, 193, 195, and now 198, we’ve offered you a focus on the major accomplishments of this unprecedented international achievement, including its contribution toward getting us earthlings out into the solar system. We’ll keep having more, here on the little podcast that could, on all of these topics, because that’s what we do. You can go online to keep up with all things NASA at NASA.gov, and you can find the full catalog of all of our episodes by going to NASA.gov/podcast, scrolling to our name. You can also find all the other cool NASA podcasts right there at the same spot where you can find us, NASA.gov/podcasts. The panel discussion in this episode was recorded on December 1st, 2020. Thanks to Alex Perryman, Gary Jordan, Norah Moran, Belinda Pulido, and Jennifer Hernandez in putting together the podcast and to the JSC External Relations Office for putting together this episode of the anniversary panel discussions. We’ll be back next week.