TMCNet: Former NASA astronaut talks to Hickory campers

[June 20, 2012]

Former NASA astronaut talks to Hickory campers

HICKORY, NC, Jun 20, 2012 (Hickory Daily Record - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Former NASA astronaut Nancy Jane Currie has spent about 40 days in space during her four missions. She spent Tuesday on solid ground telling a group of 25 middle school-age robotics campers about her extraterrestrial exploits.


Currie talked to the students at the N.C. Center for Engineering Technology and told them about her four trips into space aboard shuttles Endeavour, Discovery and Columbia. She talked about helping build the International Space Station and working on the Hubble Space Telescope.

"It really is the coolest job in the world -- that I can think of," she said.

In her work with NASA, Currie does a lot of speeches and outreach and she's a fount of tales and facts. But the two questions most people, no matter their age, really want to ask are 1: How do you eat in space? and 2: How do you go to the bathroom in space? The answers: 1: Astronauts eat a lot of dehydrated foods. Some of it gets rehydrated. Some doesn't. 2: Astronauts have a special toilet that dries solid waste, which gets brought back to earth, and shoots liquid waste into space, according to NASA.com.

Currie, a retired United States Army colonel, is the principal engineer for NASA's Engineering and Safety Center at Johnson Space Center, and she spent most of her talk detailing her work on robotics and the human-robot interface. It's the kind of work that's intended to enhance human abilities and to reduce the amount of crew time devoted to routine tasks.

When an astronaut does a spacewalk to repair exterior equipment, their spacesuits are all that are protecting them as they hurl in a freefall around the earth at 17,500 miles per hour, or Mach 23 or 5 miles per second. They're circling the globe once every 90 minutes. Night and day last 45 minutes apiece and having a robot to lend a hand could make things a whole lot safer.

Currie explained that NASA's been using robots for decades, even though they may not look much like what people tend to think of when they imagine a robot. The arm that the Space Shuttle used was a robot. The arms that the space station uses are robots, too.

"Robotics is how we built the space station," she said.

But that doesn't mean Currie's not working to develop humanoid robots.

She showed the campers a video of herself wearing a spacesuit on earth and working with a pair of "Robonauts" on a section of steel designed to simulate the kind of structure that could be used to support a deep space telescope. She communicated with the robots' operators to coordinate lifting the structure, handing tools back and forth and other tasks that are tougher than they look when you're working with a remote-driven machine.

The students also really wanted to know how it felt to float around in space. Currie's answer was simple.

"Go into a pool, totally relax, float around and that's as close as you're going to get," she said.

It's also a lot more pleasant than going for a ride on NASA's zero-gravity simulating C-131 airplane. Learning that its unappealing nickname is the "Vomit Comet," because those who ride in it tend to get sick, sent a giggle through Currie's rapt audience.

When the students asked what was next for NASA, Currie told them she wasn't sure. She said it might involve going out to get a closer look at an asteroid -- but she'd really like to take a trip back to the moon. Mars would be nice, too.

___ (c)2012 the Hickory Daily Record (Hickory, N.C.) Visit the Hickory Daily Record (Hickory, N.C.) at www.hickoryrecord.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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