Space to Ground: Deep Dive: Aug. 4, 2023

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

What is said in the film

Welcome to Space to Ground, I'm Kayla LaFrance. Today we're coming to you from the Sonny Carter Training Facility. This is where astronauts come to train to walk in space. As NASA's premier training facility that can simulate zero-g or weightless condition the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory or NBL for short is an essential tool used to design tests and develop the International Space Station. The NBL played a vital role in the training of the Space Shuttle and early Expedition crew members that work to construct the orbiting laboratory.

The NBL contains a full-scale mock-up of the space station including all modules external payloads and work sites. It even has its own robotic arm. Once an astronaut is assigned to a flight to the ISS that crew member will come and participate in seven to nine training runs here in the pool. They will be practicing the skills and tasks required if they were to do an EVA while aboard the International Space Station that could be up to 60 hours of time spent suited up and training inside the pool. For special tasks such as the ongoing iROSA installation, the soon-to-be spacewalkers will also spend extra time in the pool to run through the choreographed actions that they will need to complete once they are in orbit.

Crew members assigned to support the spacewalks from inside the station will also take part during the training run where they will practice using the robotic arm manipulate it to simulate the full experience of working in space. But you may ask yourself what is it actually like to take part and help in the training of our astronauts before they go into space. We have a friend here to help answer those questions today. "When you get your first glimpse underwater it's a little overwhelming. The pool is immense and its depth is deceptive.

I can see the space station ahead of us but I don't want to get distracted, I need to concentrate on the work we need to do. " Dane Turner is the host of a new series of shows called Cosmic Careers that will debut soon on the NASA Johnson YouTube channel. So Dane, you literally dove into the deep end for your new show tell us about it. The NBL is an amazing facility with such amazing professionals here. It's a 40-foot deep dive tank.

It's 86 degrees. But then you also get the full-size mock-up of the ISS and these mock-ups they're built in-house and they're meant to be underwater and to be climbed around the, the astronauts use these to practice for their spacewalks and they've got all the handrails and all of the restraining tether points and everything that they've got on the outside of the space station is there so to be able to move around these things and to move on them as the astronauts do is just it it's the only way to experience space on Earth. Now we currently have a training run going on behind us right now and it's a beehive of activity. Can you tell us more about what the dive team is doing to support our astronauts today? Yeah, so you've got five divers for each astronaut in the water.

You've got divers with cameras called Float Divers who are making sure that they've got a shot of the astronaut at all times. And then you've got these Safety Divers and the safety divers are there to make sure that the astronaut is always in a good position or and to make sure nothing goes wrong with the astronaut. And then you've got the Utility Divers and utility divers are there to make sure that all the equipment is in place and and everything for the test run is as it should be. So you got to go into the NBL for part of a new show that you're doing called Cosmic Careers can you tell us more about that. As you know here at JSC we're not just about rocket science and at Cosmic Careers we take a look at all of the other jobs that make human space flight possible.

So for this first episode we came to the NBL and looked at the divers who support the spacewalk training. And in the future we'll look at some of the many other jobs that are able to support human spaceflight on the ground... just not the ones you might think about. The premiere episode of Cosmic Careers will debut soon on the NASA Johnson YouTube channel so stay tuned Also this week the latest shipment of research and supplies was sent to the International Space Station. The Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft launched atop an Antares rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility off the coast of Virginia.

Over 8000 pounds of cargo is aboard Cygnus including crew provisions, new science payloads, and new space parts for the future station maintenance. And from the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory here in Houston, that's Space to Ground for this week thanks for watching we'll see you next week

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