The International Space Station’s historic one-year expedition has been a mission of numbers – one that could add up to huge benefits for future space exploration – including the Journey to Mars, as well as for life on Earth. In March 2015, 2 space explorers, NASA’s Mark Kelly and Russia’s Mikhail Kornienko, set out on an unprecedented odyssey to the 1-and-only laboratory in microgravity, to conduct a multitude of biomedical and psychological studies on how the human body reacts to long-duration spaceflight. Based on a scheduled March 1 return to Earth – the one-year crew’s 340 days in space will have seen — almost 400 experiments conducted aboard the station, 5,440 orbits of the Earth, and Kelly and Kornienko will have traveled a total of about 143, 846, 525 miles – roughly the distance of a trip from Earth to Mars. Also, Next space station crew trains, Tipping point technologies, CST-100 Starliner water testing, and NASA’s journey to diversity.

TRANSCRIPT

The One-Year Mission: by the numbers

The International Space Station’s historic one-year expedition has been a mission of numbers – one that could add up to huge benefits for future space exploration – including the Journey to Mars, as well as for life on Earth. In March 2015, 2 space explorers, NASA’s Mark Kelly and Russia’s Mikhail Kornienko, set out on an unprecedented odyssey to the 1-and-only laboratory in microgravity, to conduct a multitude of biomedical and psychological studies on how the human body reacts to long-duration spaceflight. Based on a scheduled March 1 return to Earth – the one-year crew’s 340 days in space will have seen — almost 400 experiments conducted aboard the station, 5,440 orbits of the Earth, and Kelly and Kornienko will have traveled a total of about143, 846, 525 miles – roughly the distance of a trip from Earth to Mars.

(Scott Kelly, Expedition 46 Commander)

“You know ‘Misha’ and I are only, you know, one data point, really. You know, you need a lot more numbers to draw specific conclusions, but I’m hoping what we find is a lot of information that will help us eventually, you know, continue our path towards Mars.”

We’ll have more on the one-year crew’s return to Earth – on the next episode of This Week @NASA.

Next space station crew trains

Meanwhile, the next crew headed to the space station – Expedition 47-48, featuring NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, continues its prelaunch activities. Williams and crewmates Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos conducted final qualification training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia on Feb. 24 and 25.  Ovchinin, Williams and Skripochka are scheduled to launch on March 18 Eastern time, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio will spend six months on the space station.

Tipping point technologies

NASA’s Associate Administrator for Space Technology, Steve Jurczyk, was on hand for a recent media day at Made In Space Inc., an American-based startup company located at NASA’s Research Park, at Moffett Field, California. A Made In Space 3-D printer was the first of its type on the International Space Station. The company’s “Versatile In-Space Robotic Precision Manufacturing and Assembly System” project was one of nine recently selected through a NASA program to mature technologies beyond what’s known as their “tipping point”… and qualify them for market, while delivering technologies and capabilities needed for future NASA missions and commercial applications.

CST-100 Starliner water testing

The 20-foot-deep Hydro Impact Basin at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is being used to evaluate a full-scale test article of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. Although the spacecraft is designed to land on solid ground, the company is testing in water in the unlikely case that an emergency during launch or ascent would make a water landing necessary. The testing is part of the qualification phase required by NASA to ensure the Starliner is ready to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station from the United States.

NASA’s journey to diversity

In celebration of Black History Month, NASA’s Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, in partnership with the Headquarters Equal Opportunity & Diversity Management Office and History Program Office, sponsored a program at headquarters on Feb. 24 showcasing the historic journey to demographic diversity within NASA. Special guests included Richard Paul and Steven Moss, authors of the book “We Could Not Fail”, which profiles 10 pioneer African American space workers whose personal stories illustrate the role NASA and the space program played in promoting civil rights.

And that’s what’s up this week @NASA.