A slim ring of light slowly emerges from the surrounding black void — an eerie, otherworldly glow — not your typical sunrise? How about watching the sun rise 16 times a day? Discover how NASA Astronaut Dr. Kjell Lindgren measures a day orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station.
The poet, T.S. Eliot, wrote “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...” There’s a great photo of you making coffee on the ISS. So what’s the measure of a day in space?
The ISS is on UTC, or Universal Coordinated Time. So Central Standard Time in the U.S. is UTC–06:00. That means when it’s six o’clock in the morning on the space station and we’re waking up, it’s midnight in Houston. We go through the morning rituals of getting cleaned up and having breakfast. Then we look to see what the schedule holds for us. We start the day with a morning conference with the ground. We talk with mission control — Houston — and then briefly with each of the mission controls around the world to make sure that we’re all on the same page. Then we start our work for the day. About seven o’clock in the evening we have a conference and talk about what we accomplished and what the next day holds. Then the rest of the evening is ours to have dinner and clean up and do all the things we need in preparation for bed.
There’s a certain psychological and emotional value to the sense of a day passing. Do you get to share the story of your day with other crew members, or maybe with your family, at least from time to time?
When you start the day you know what you’re looking forward to, what you need to accomplish, what the challenges are, and maybe where some of the breaks are. We don’t really have an “everybody takes lunch at noon” on the space station. Oftentimes we’re so busy our lunches are offset from each other, so we don’t really gather for lunch. But we make a point and — every crew is a little bit different, but on the crews I’ve been associated with — we make a point of having dinner together. It’s nice to have that time to discuss the day, and lessons learned and all those sorts of things. You get to the end of the day, and it’s time to say “Okay, we’re done with work and now there’s personal time.” You still have that sense of satisfaction.
Staying in touch with loved ones is a little bit different too. You find out what the ebb and flow of activities are here on Earth, so I try to call my family when we can connect. I have to get up pretty early in the morning, so I often call sometime during the day when it makes sense with what my family is up to. I may try to call when my wife has a break during her day. But definitely I would call home in the evenings. Then I’m able to sync up with my family.
I love your spacewalk selfie! You did a couple of spacewalks, performing maintenance tasks. How long were you outside the ISS?
Our spacewalks are scheduled to run about 6½ hours. Both of mine were a little bit longer — a little over 7 hours. And that just represents the time we spend outside of the space station. The air pressure we experience on the ISS is at sea level, or 14.7 psi. Our space suits are pressurized at 4.3 psi. That’s a significant pressure drop. We do that because if the suits were inflated to 14.7 psi we wouldn’t be able to move around in them. They would be too stiff. We reduce that pressure in order to give us more flexibility in the suit. That means that we have to be at 100% oxygen in order to have a high enough partial pressure of oxygen to support our metabolic needs.
That pressure drop is very much like a scuba diver going from depth up to the surface. We have to deep breath oxygen and decrease the pressure over time to prevent ourselves from getting decompression sickness. We get up at 6 a.m. and spend about 3 to 4 hours in the space suit before we even go outside. You feel like you’ve had a full day before you even start the hard work. It makes for a pretty long day!
You’re in the space suit for 10 to 12 hours! How do you eat?
We don’t eat during that time. We have a snack when we get up in the morning. We’ve got water in the space suit — there’s a little water bag that we can drink from. Unfortunately, there’s no way to eat when you’re in a space suit. We have a nice meal afterwards.
On the NASA website I saw the video of your Q&A with your alma mater — Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Virginia. Those kids asked great questions! It was a joy to watch. You mentioned that the food is good.
About half our food system is dehydrated. The other half is prepared and then thermo-stabilized or irradiated in order to give it a long shelf life. So it’s probably not something I would order in a restaurant, but for a diverse menu that you can eat in space? It’s not bad! Of course, once you’ve been up there a few months, the offering starts to get a little old. It’s all the same stuff, so even if you’ve got favorites — you know — we cherish variety.
Occasionally we’ll get little snacks and candy — stuff like that — in these little packets. We tend to use a lot of hot sauce on our food just to mix it up. The nutritionists work hard to provide us food that tastes good and supports our health and nutrition. It’s a tall order and they do a great job. We feel very grateful that we have the menu we’ve got.
Years ago I had the opportunity to meet Alan Bean and see his beautiful paintings. I commented on their serene nature — how peaceful and quiet spaces seems. Alan shared with me that it’s not quiet for astronauts. He explained that humans have to bring their environment with them. It’s very mechanical. There’s lots going on — a lot of energy is being transferred to support life, and so there’s a lot of noise. Is the noise level still pretty high?
Well, it’s a spacecraft. There’s no convection to move air, so everything that happens within that spacecraft to support life requires some element of power. Fans are constantly running. Pumps are pressurizing the thermal control system. The spacecraft is very much like a living being. You come to understand the different noises, sensations and smells — you get a feel for the space station itself. It’s constantly making noise, and when that noise disappears you actually recognize it — you realize something’s different and potentially wrong.
The space station has a life of its own that could be likened to a city — the sounds and smells of a neighborhood or a city block. The life of the space station is something we become attuned to. There’s no time when it’s absolutely quiet. There’s always ambient noise. Even within a space suit there are pumps and fans running. Those are things you become very familiar with. You notice if they go quiet.
You describe the space station as a being. Of course, beings have finite lives. The space station was designed with a life expectancy. Do we know how much longer it will be functioning?
It’s hard to tell. When the space station was designed, it was designed with a lifespan in mind. NASA has its recommendations and goals. The administration also has its goals. I think right now, certainly we’re planning to fly for several more years. But I don’t know what the official planning documents say the current life expectancy is.
The space station program has done an amazing job of making sure that we’ve got the equipment and the spare parts onboard to address equipment issues or failures. We continue to upgrade various pieces of the space station as technology improves. We’re giving communication access to various payloads both inside and outside the space station. It makes those payloads more accessible to the scientists who need them.
It’s been a lot of fun just to see the space station grow from its very first couple of modules back in the year 2000, into the amazing structure that exists right now. In fact, right now we’re in the process of upgrading our solar arrays to get better power efficiency and availability. For the space walks that I’m training for — a big part of that training is dedicated to the installation of these new solar arrays.
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This is the second installment of an interview with NASA Astronaut Dr. Kjell Lindgren about his experiences on the ISS. The first installment of this interview was posted on Earth Day and is titled "Earth From on High. "The final blog is titled "Down to Earth."
NASA Astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren
(Pronunciation: CHELL LIND-grin)
Dr. Kjell N. Lindgren was selected by NASA in 2009. He spent most of his childhood abroad and returned to the U.S. to complete his education and earn a Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Colorado. He is board certified in emergency and aerospace medicine. After serving as the Deputy Crew Surgeon for STS-130 and Expedition 24, he was selected as an astronaut in June 2009 as one of 14 members of the 20th NASA astronaut class. Dr. Lindgren flew on Expedition 44/45 and logged 141 days in space. He participated in two spacewalks and in more than a hundred different scientific experiments.
Photo: “Expedition 44 NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren” courtesy of NASA
Video: “How to Prepare Thanksgiving Food in Space” courtesy of NASA
Photos courtesy of NASA:
NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren prepares a fresh coffee using one of the specially designed cups used in the Capillary Beverage study
Astronaut Scott Kelly posted this photo taken from the International Space Station to Twitter on August 10, 2015 with the caption, “Good Morning to those in the western USA. Looks like there’s a lot going on down there."
NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren snaps a quick selfie while working outside of the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Nov. 6, 2015. Lindgren and fellow NASA astronaut Scott Kelly restored the port truss (P6) ammonia cooling system to its original configuration and returned ammonia to the desired levels in both the prime and back-up systems. The spacewalk lasted for seven hours and 48 minutes.
View of a food package containing cornbread dressing, a planned Thanksgiving meal item.
A clear container of candy floats in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station. Makes a handy snack stop for the Expedition 45 crew.
May 23, 2011 This image of the International Space Station and the docked space shuttle Endeavour, flying at an altitude of approximately 220 miles, was taken by Expedition 27 crew member Paolo Nespoli from the Soyuz TMA-20 following its undocking on May 23, 2011 (USA time). The pictures taken by Nespoli are the first taken of a shuttle docked to the International Space Station from the perspective of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Onboard the Soyuz were Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 27 commander Dmitry Kondratyev; Nespoli, a European Space Agency astronaut; and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman. Coleman and Nespoli were both flight engineers. The three landed in Kazakhstan later that day, completing 159 days in space.
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