Astronaut Nicole Stott Answers Space Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

hi I'm astronaut Nicole stopped and I'm gonna answer your questions about space on Twitter this is space support from Zara are we saying then the tanning in space would happen just in virtue of being in space because cosmic radiation and unfiltered UV rays when you're in space of course you're above you know the bulk of the atmosphere and that makes it a lot more dangerous to be exposed to the sun's radiation so we try to protect ourselves from that for the windows that we do look through most of them have a UV filter on them which helps protect us but there are some windows that don't so we know in particular what those are and we try to really limit our time in front of them all right Joey Pavan elly is there Wi-Fi in space yes there's Wi-Fi in space you might not be happy with it because it's not dial-up slow but it is pretty slow ah Kevin Gomes age limit for space travel I hope not good I'd really like to go back there really isn't one set I think that the criteria is associated more with your education with the career and work you've done and also from you know just a medical and psychological evaluation how can we detect and track space debris which sensors were used and where are they located all of that tracking is done from the ground and through other satellite resources that we have and they have a whole unit that tracks debris in space for us and then communicates with NASA about it one of my greatest memories of things that I really remember is being at the window it was nighttime outside and watching this streak of light go below me and floating down to the other end of the station and asking my crewmates hey what you know I just saw this oh yeah that's just you know a microbe meteorite you know probably entering the atmosphere or a piece of debris entering the atmosphere and like like a shooting star is basically what they told me and I remember floating there and thinking wow that was really beautiful and then I also remember thinking man I'm really glad I saw that because that means it didn't hit my spaceship and that's a really good thing I don't want that hitting fiction Adam asked what is the coordinate system used in orbits and is it the same as non orbit journeys such as that to the Moon and Mars this you know this is a really great question on the space station for instance we're flying around the Earth you can see this model here and the way we fly you can see this little space station at the end so this whole space station this is like forward the whole space station is moving around the earth with that point pointing forward the whole time and we have a coordinate system associated with that to you know let us know locations and how the station is moving you can apply the same one that we use with this space station flying around the earth to fly other like non orbit journeys it can work for you there's also specialized coordinate systems all different kinds of them Sam Anderson do you think eating a large messy sandwich should be harder or easier in space I don't know that would be harder or easier but it probably would be Messier things tend to float around so if you let go of your sandwich is probably going to come apart in the bridal float and the stuff inside will float around of course we do silly astronaut tricks with food and drink all the time pants later how long does it take to get to the moon and how fast can you go in space now this is a really great question you know it it takes about two days to get to the moon the way we fly to the moon so we launched off the earth we get going really fast and we circle the earth and we do this what they call slingshot method of then accelerating ourselves toward toward and then around the moon that's all really cool orbital mechanics that goes on there and it's really neat to me how we can use the gravity and spin of our own planet to accelerate a spaceship off into space on the space shuttle we traveled at 17,500 miles an hour the guys that went to the moon about 24,000 miles an hour ten days earns what do you do if you're an astronaut and you experience serious health problem while in space well hopefully your crewmates will be able to take care of you a number of us trained to be medical officers on board a mission and we have probably any supply you could possibly need to take care of anything and we are in constant communication with our medical on the ground worst case if we needed to get somebody home we could we could do that in our rescue vehicle or the Soyuz spacecraft I never received any training about what to do if somebody dies in space I guess you deal with that real time but we can always get somebody home if we have to all right from Jesus what happens to astronauts when they come back from space do they have any health problems or things they have to greatly readjust to well the main thing that you greatly have to readjust to is gravity your body just I think forgets at first what being in this load of gravity is like and so you feel really really heavy there are other things that go on with our bodies that we try to counteract while we're in space so that we're healthy when we get home like your you know bones and muscles really starting to you know go away because you don't need them when you're working in space so we exercise a couple hours a day up there to try to stay in shape so when we come home where we're feeling good and there are things that we really don't quite understand yet about the way radiation affects us and also you know we're seeing things with people's eyes where vision is changing and we think it's because of this pressure that you get on the back of your eye but we're really trying to figure that out too the question is how can I be hired in NASA and what is it like I strongly encourage you to apply for a job at NASA working at NASA was absolutely it's the best job I could think of I started out at the Kennedy Space Center working on the shuttle program and helping getting the space shuttles ready to fly for for crews and in that one job I got to move around Kennedy Space Center and work in the launch control center and then move and work in the orbiter processing facility which was like this big hangar where the orbiter came back in you got it the vehicle ready to fly again and so through that one job with NASA I got to see all aspects of how we get spaceships ready to fly and then before becoming an astronaut I moved out to the Johnson Space Center in Houston and for two years I got to work on the shuttle training aircraft which was this modified corporate jet that we use to basically dive at the runway and train astronauts how to land the Space Shuttle and in doing that job I got to wear this really cool helmet in the t-38 trainer jets and and the shuttle training aircraft as we flew and trained astronauts and then applied to be an astronaut and was selected and for 15 years I worked in the astronaut office and had the opportunity to fly in space twice and spend over three months living and working on the space station everything about it is ultimately about improving life on Earth and I think there's no better place to work than one where you know you're doing some kind of greater good work for not just yourself and your family but for everybody that we share this planet with so highly recommend it how often are additional supplies sent up to aid the ISS okay pretty regularly actually and we do that with a number of different of cargo ships that get sent to the station I would say it's once every couple months that we're sending things we've got two US vehicles that we use to get supplies to the space station one of them can actually bring things home too we have a Japanese cargo vehicle and a Russian cargo vehicle so there's pretty regular resupply going on the five space programs that are involved with the international space station are the US through NASA the Russian Space Agency the Japanese Space Agency Canadian and European it's really great because we have this international partnership we share food we share supplies we distribute that across the station as necessary and the Russians can fly things on the US vehicles and the same is true for all the other countries as well this is from Danny skorca and he asks what will power SLS once the old shuttle engines are used up that is an excellent question you know sadly the way SLS is being developed those engines wouldn't be reused so I think that right now they're looking at how do they build more of them and the amount of time that we'll have between SLS missions I think they'll they'll have the time to build new engines to power SLS and hopefully we'll have new kinds of propulsion coming along as well Michael Moreno wondering if the astronauts on the Internet Space Station ever get bored I hope not I was never bored in space there's the window to look out see earth below you sharing stories with your crewmates floating around flying and you can even bring things that you enjoy doing on earth so I had the chance to paint while I was in space my crewmates played music in space this is not a place where you get bored when a ship blows up in space where do the pieces go do they just float around in the abyss forever and ever well some of them might I suppose depending on how fast they went away from the explosion but ultimately like if something blew up in low-earth orbit it would orbit for some period of time would eventually slow down and get dragged into the atmosphere and burn up so this is my helmet that I wore when I flew in the t-38 trainer Jets which are the little NASA Jets it's an Air Force trainer jet two seats it's got a visor that is like a Sun Visor and also a clear visor you always want to keep that down a lot of times in the movies you'll see the actors without their oxygen mask on there's not a time unless you're on the ground in a jet that you don't wear your oxygen mask NASA was really great they they would provide these helmets to you and they kind of customized them to you you could pretty much get anything you wanted on the back I just did my name which I thought was simple and nice and I really like the color blue thanks for watching I'm astronaut nicole stott and I hope you learned a little something about space

Channel: WIRED

Views: 456,923

Rating: 4.9560337 out of 5

Keywords: astronaut, space, nicole stott, nicole stott astronaut, space tech support, tech support space, tech support wired space, space support, nicole stott nasa, nasa nicole stott, nasa astronaut, space travel, nicole stott space wired, nicole stott iss, astronaut answers questions, astronaut answers, astronaut answers space questions, astronauts, in space, being in space, what is space like, wired

Id: yX1KsPh_D2Q

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/nednobbins]

Is there a transcript?

I'm sure she has interesting answers but I never really understood the trend toward youtube videos of people reading tweets out loud and verbally responding to them.

[u/YOUREABOT]

And this is what keeps bringing me back to this channel. Keep this series alive❤❤