NARRATOR
NASA is working with commercial and international partners to design and develop a small spaceship that will orbit the Moon. The agency has dubbed this spacecraft “the Gateway,” as it will be an access point for both lunar surface exploration and crewed voyages to Mars and beyond. This spaceship will be a temporary home and office for Artemis astronauts — a five-day, 250,000-mile commute from Earth.
NASA plans to build the Gateway with just five or six rocket launches, compared to the 34 launches it took to build the International Space Station, NASA’s low-Earth orbit laboratory. Much like the space station, Gateway will be built in partnership with international space agencies and commercial partners. The agency’s powerful Space Launch System and the Orion crew vehicle will be key to the overall assembly and operations of the Gateway.
The Gateway will have living quarters, laboratories for science and research, docking ports for visiting spacecraft and more. It will provide NASA and its partners access to more of the lunar surface than ever before, supporting both human and robotic missions as a base of operations.
The Gateway will be much smaller than the International Space Station. While the station is larger than a six-bedroom house, Gateway’s interior will be about the size of a studio apartment. The space station is meant to be occupied continuously. Astronauts will live and work aboard Gateway for up to three months at a time, conducting science experiments, and taking trips to the lunar surface before returning home to Earth. The rest of the time, cutting-edge robotics and computers will operate Gateway and the experiments inside and outside the spaceship.
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In science fiction, deep space habitats often look like vast behemoths of shimmering steel floating through the abyss — titanium transports carrying life between colonized planets in galaxies far, far away or long, long ago or in futures near and far. Writers and artists often envision architectures of magnitude in space: sweeping expanses of glass and steel with panoramic views of the cosmos and room for hundreds of thousands of space voyagers — all living comfortably.
How realistic are these structures? Most often, not very.
Perhaps an engineer with unlimited resources could design something of the scope and magnitude of Star Wars’ Death Star or Star Trek’s Enterprise, but unlimited resources are hard to come by. Launching material to space can be enormously expensive. The cost of fuel alone would make most of the grandiose structures of science fiction films laughable.
But, the strictures of space habitation design go far beyond the expense of launch. Want gigantic bay windows on your spacecraft? Wonderful — but that’s an awful lot of radiation you’re letting in. Want to build an enormous skyscraper-spacecraft like an interstellar Chrysler Building? Sounds great — but what little gravity you have would pull your feet towards the center of the spacecraft, not down towards the carpet.
Instead, deep space habitats, for now at least, look like the Gateway, of modest size but huge importance to developing new exploration capabilities.
The architectures of Earth won’t work in space. There will be unique design challenges that come from this extreme environment — challenges that Gateway addresses head on. But, while space habitats like Gateway might not resemble traditional terrestrial structures, there are still plenty of lessons to be learned from Earthbound architectural theories as we extend our reach among the stars.
In this episode, we’ll talk about one theory that might just inform the way we house astronauts on Mars. We’ll also talk about the ways that architecture and space communications facilitate wellbeing through a concept called “salutogenesis.”
I’m Danny Baird. This is the Invisible Network.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, more often called, simply, Vitruvius, is one of the earliest architectural theorists. His treatise, “De Architectura” or “On Architecture,” places extant Roman buildings in the context of life in ancient Rome, defining their usefulness in society. Referencing Vitruvius, Louis Sullivan, an early 20th century architect considered a father of modernism, declared “form follows function,” implying that all architecture should be judged on how well its design serves those who inhabit it.
In space, form doesn’t necessarily follow function. Human space habitation is rooted, by necessity, in pragmatism. The realities of space travel lead to tight, confined spaces; aesthetics can’t be prioritized. The human experience of space takes a backseat to the systems that protect humans from space.
NASA engineer Dr. Ruthan Lewis hopes to change that.
RUTHAN LEWIS
My name is Ruthan Lewis. My title is exploration systems and habitation manager. That role entails trying to conceptualize, formulate, devise and design aspects of human habitation in space, both in terms of transiting through space, as well as any habitation aspects on a surface.
NARRATOR
Lewis applies her diverse background in both terrestrial architecture and space habitation to the challenges of long-duration spaceflight. She seeks to employ salutogensis, a hybrid Greek and Latin term which means “the origins of health,” to space architecture, promoting wellness among astronauts off-world.
RUTHAN LEWIS
Salutogenesis involves a number of different aspects that basically describes the wellness or the interaction of a human in terms of their wellness: the interaction of a human with their environment, with their work — whatever they’re doing: the task at hand — and giving them the opportunity for context and setting value and understanding their interaction — being able to more effectively interact with that environment.
NARRATOR
Aaron Antonovsky, an American-Israeli medical sociologist, introduced the salutogenic framework in the ’70s and ’80s. He wanted to orient medical care towards engendering health, rather than towards mitigating risks or treating diseases. He desired a sense of coherence, which he defined as:
“A global orientation that expresses the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic feeling of confidence that:
- The stimuli deriving from one’s internal and external environments in the course of living are structured, predictable and explicable;
- The resources are available to one to meet the demands posed by these stimuli; and
- These demands are challenges, worthy of investment and engagement.”
Essentially, Antonovsky wants life to be filled with order and purpose as well as the resources we need to live our lives meaningfully.
RUTHAN LEWIS
Salutogenesis is looking at context, value — knowing that you’ve got the resources, knowing that you have value in doing what you’re doing, that you can manage what you’re doing.
NARRATOR
As NASA goes forward to the Moon and establishes a sustained presence there and especially as we make the long voyage to Mars, the mental and physical wellbeing of astronauts will be paramount to surviving space’s lonely extremes. Across the agency, scientists and engineers across disciplines ranging from space communications to human factors are making sure that NASA is ready to explore. Lewis is applying her understanding of salutogenic principles to the architectural spaces NASA designs for its astronauts. In doing so, she hopes to improve the quality of life for those living and working in space.
RUTHAN LEWIS
Salutogenesis combines a number of things. It’s not just the structural aspects, it’s the behavioral aspects as well.
NARRATOR
Salutogenic architecture places particular emphasis on the relationship between spaces and the physiological responses they inspire. A goal of this architecture is to promote wellness through conscientious design and aesthetics. Applying salutogenesis in space — where cramped, sterile quarters are the norm — could reduce the stresses of long-duration human spaceflight, such as the emotional toll of isolation or the physiological strain of the microgravity environment.
Lewis projects her knowledge of the built environment on Earth into space, creating tangible design guidelines from pseudo-abstract principles.
RUTHAN LEWIS
There are architectural principles and design principles and techniques that you can use to be able to promote the wellness of a person in space.
NARRATOR
She judges space habitat design on three major salutogenic qualities: comprehensibility, meaningfulness and manageability.
Let’s start with comprehensibility:
Terrestrial homes are dynamic. They can change with the seasons and the environment around them. Architects understand how these changes impact humans on Earth, but NASA habitation designers and human factors specialists must address these changes in space, relating earthly experiences to this extreme environment and discovering new experiences that one may never be able to have on Earth.
On the International Space Station, whipping through the sky at 17,500 miles per hour, the view changes every second. There’s a sunrise outside every 90 minutes. But astronauts can only experience “outdoors” through another built environment — a spacesuit. There is no direct tactile exposure to this “outside.”
These stimuli and interactions with space impact astronauts’ feelings and perceptions of “home.” Understanding the emotional and physiological responses to these environments can help engineers design better structures for astronauts, improving their safety and wellbeing.
Lewis proposes a number of architectural manipulations to enhance the comprehensibility of space for astronauts — to make them feel more at home. As an example, manipulating scale can alter the sense of distance and mass. An engineer could design a habitat that makes Earth feel closer or makes the void of space more distant by manipulating perspective.
Then there’s meaningfulness:
Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong said this of seeing Earth from space: “It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the entire planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”
This kind of perspective, dubbed the “Overview Effect,” is common among spacefarers. Encountering Earth from so far away leads to a unique kind of introspection, a sense of sublime awe.
NASA astronaut Col. Alvin Drew:
COL. ALVIN DREW
The Overview Effect — I think most astronauts will tell you they’ve experienced it — is when you look back on Earth from space and you see this membrane-thin blue atmosphere around this 8,000 mile wide rock of nickel and iron sitting out there, and it looks awfully small compared to this 13.5 billion light year expanse of space. It’s a tiny little island in the middle of nothing, this great, big, infinite ocean.
On that tiny, little island, there is this thin little thing — this little reef. Everything you’ve experienced — all of history, all of humanity — is in that little envelope of blue air.
NARRATOR
Lewis hopes habitat engineers embrace the sublime experience of spaceflight in their designs, arranging spaces to highlight the meaningfulness of astronauts’ work.
RUTHAN LEWIS
Exploration of the Moon offers a platform to do that. But, wow, when we start going to Mars, where the Earth and the Moon are pinpoints in the sky, it’s not something you can put your thumb over it — you can put a fraction of your thumb over it.
NARRATOR
Views of the outside remind astronauts of their place among the stars. Spaces can be arranged to enhance motivation, producing positive feelings as one flows through the built environment. Compression and expansion of thresholds invokes a sense of increased volume, making rooms feel less cramped.
Further, Lewis wants habitats to promote a sense of community, enabling personal and purposeful interactions between explorers. She recommends creating resting and gathering places that facilitate socialization and group activity.
Finally, manageability:
“Form follows function,” so, to meet the ever-evolving needs of astronauts, form must be mutable, fluid. As the functions performed by astronauts change, the forms they dwell in must adapt.
Lewis proposes that habitats be customizable to changing mission landscapes. Building flexible spaces that respond to dynamic environments could improve astronaut safety. Flexible spaces that can change purpose in real-time would empower astronauts to execute their mission with agility, responding to changing mission needs without waiting for commands or resources from Earth.
Additionally, these adaptable spaces must be sustainable, so that astronauts can use their resources efficiently and productively. For example, a Trombe wall, a passive solar heating design used in buildings on Earth, could be used for heating space habitats. Naturally occurring lava tubes could shelter astronauts from radiation. Astronauts could recycle mission waste for use as radiation shielding or other useful products.
Since Vitruvius, understanding the relationship between humans and the spaces they occupy has been the goal of architecture. Like Vitruvius before her, Lewis is a futurist of sorts: an architect hoping that, through salutogenesis, she can design a future where NASA astronauts feel at home among the sublime.
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While the built environment can promote wellbeing by providing astronauts a sense of home far from Earth, there are many other ways to facilitate salutogenesis in space. Antonovsky developed the salutogenic model because he believed that when looking at the health of a person as a whole, managing stress is just as important as treating disease.
Space communications provides astronauts with the critical connection to both mission control and home, helping our astronauts feel cared-for and stress-free.
Space communications services ensure astronaut safety through the vital links that connect deep space and mission control. But these services also maintain human connections: conversations with loved ones, access to news, entertainment and culture.
Col. Alvin Drew:
COL. ALVIN DREW
On my second flight, we had a full internet connection back to the Earth using a satellite and, because of that, we had internet phone, we could use video, Skype chats and things like that. I could simply call people at home. I’m talking to my cousin — he was fighting over in Iraq — a sister who was in New York, and just talking to them live. In fact, I was flying over at one point, just by sheer coincidence, and they were able to see the space station go overhead while I was talking to them over the phone.
My first flight, we didn’t have that. It was — all my communications were strictly with Houston and it felt very remote. The second time I was up there, it felt much more like this was an extension of life on Earth.
NARRATOR
Communication with home will help astronauts manage the stress of long-duration spaceflight, giving them a semblance of normalcy in this extreme setting.
Neil Mallik serves as the network director for the Human Space Flight Communications and Tracking Network, which synthesizes all of NASA’s communications capabilities into comprehensive services for astronauts.
NEIL MALLIK
One of the great benefits of how we do the design of our links and integration with the team in Houston is really understanding what it is they need in terms of data, both communicating to and communicating from. One of the things that we are able to do with these high data bandwidths: we basically bring the comforts of what we have on Earth into space.
Case in point: with space station, we’ve now upped the data rate to 600 megasymbols per second. While that may not mean anything to the audience that isn’t so technically inclined, we’ve basically increased our data rate speeds similar, if not better, to what we actually already have with existing, ground-based infrastructure.
So, what does that mean? From a mental standpoint, you’re able to go and talk to family members, you’re able to go and talk to your own flight surgeon, be able to talk to the flight controllers back home, just like you would over the phone.
The other great thing about these links that we facilitate and that we enable: when the crew are having rest days, they are able to go and actually just watch sporting events. They go and take stunning video of things that they are able to see from space and being able to bring that down. And that’s something that basically allows them to have that extension from home.
NARRATOR
In low-Earth orbit, as on the International Space Station, astronauts have long enjoyed near-continuous communications through the Space Network, a collection of NASA-developed relay satellites high above Earth. At the Moon, Apollo astronauts had less-than-continuous network access, but still plenty of service — especially considering how relatively short their missions were.
Gateway astronauts, who might stay in lunar orbit for months at a time, will want the robust communications coverage enjoyed by denizens of the space station. Astronauts journeying to Mars, whose missions might last well over a year, will certainly want the same.
Alvin Drew:
COL. ALVIN DREW
The biggest existential problem you’re going to have is that Earth is no longer a big, blue marble. It’s a little, blue dot out there amongst a field of stars and nobody is talking to you in realtime.
NARRATOR
A connection to home will lessen the feeling of isolation on these long journeys to the unknown. To facilitate salutogenic communications — robust connections that keep astronauts tethered to their homes — NASA must synthesize all of its networking capabilities in service to spaceflight.
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Communications is a broad term.
There’s space communications: the way we talk to NASA assets in space. There’s communications as a business discipline: managing a brand and marketing. And then there’s communications between people: my speaking with you right now.
Art, and architecture with it, are also forms of communication. Salutogenesis applied to space habitation seeks to communicate comprehensibility, meaningfulness and manageability to astronauts — to communicate a sense of home and comfort, a sense of meaning and a sense of function.
Likewise, communications over the invisible links that connect spacecraft with Earth ensure that our astronauts never feel too far from home, even as they journey to the Moon, Mars and beyond. They facilitate tangible wellbeing — astronaut vital signs and mission communications — and emotional comfort — a sense of connection with loved ones on Earth.
NASA has already started building our Gateway to deep space. The first major piece of the Gateway will provide power and propulsion for the spaceship, and is targeted to launch on a private rocket in 2022. After it reaches orbit, and tests its power and communications capabilities, NASA will launch four astronauts on an SLS and Orion mission. They will carry two new sections that will add a small living space and initial science and operational capabilities to the Gateway.
Each year after that, astronauts will travel to the Gateway with new parts until it’s fully assembled as a long, slender caterpillar of interlocking metal nodes.
The Gateway will be a proving ground for technologies and a test for our astronauts. They will attempt to make a home of this “studio apartment” in deep space, communicating the physical challenges and mental stresses of long duration spaceflight far from Earth so that engineers like Ruthan Lewis can better provide for the astronauts who make that even longer voyage to Mars.
But, Artemis astronauts will also communicate something else. Their discoveries and insights will flow through NASA’s networks. Live 4K, ultra-high definition video will stream to Earth over laser links. Those videos will show us on Earth the sublime environment beyond Earth’s bounds.
And maybe, when we glimpse our small, hazy blue marble through our televisions and laptops, we might just share in a sense of sublime awe, that overview effect so many astronauts have reported upon seeing our Earth from a distance. It’s a planet so small in the grand scheme of the universe, but so significant because it is (and always will be) our first home.
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This season of “The Invisible Network” debuted in November of 2019. The podcast is produced by the Space Communications and Navigation program, or SCaN, out of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Episodes were written and recorded by me, Danny Baird, with editorial support from Matthew Peters. Our public affairs officers are Peter Jacobs of Goddard’s Office of Communications, Clare Skelly of the Space Technology Mission Directorate and Kathryn Hambleton of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.
Special thanks to Barbara Adde, SCaN Policy and Strategic Communications director, Rob Garner, Goddard Web Team lead, Amber Jacobson, communications lead for SCaN at Goddard, and all those who have leant their time, talent and expertise to making “The Invisible Network” a reality. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. For transcripts of the episodes, visit NASA.gov/invisible. To learn more about the vital role that space communications plays in NASA’s mission, visit NASA.gov/SCaN.