space

Behind the scenes at NASA: The HERA project

Jennifer Raff7 Comments
HERA1
Side view of the HERA project facility. The hygiene module, where bathrooms and showers are housed, is in the foreground.

 

What happens if you put a group of adults together in a confined space and leave them isolated for weeks? Can they get along? Can they work together to productively carry out complex tasks, stay in shape, and conduct scientific research?

This sounds like the premise for a reality show (minus the scientific research part, which sadly doesn’t play well on television). And in a way it is: these adults are filmed every second of the day. But instead of entertainment, this project has one very serious goal: develop strategies for keeping humans healthy, sane, productive, and safe for long duration voyages into space.

The Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) project is a critical component of NASA’s Flight Analogs Project, which carries out research on different aspects of human long-duration spaceflight. I recently visited NASA to give a talk on genetics to ISS scientists, and was able to tour the HERA facility and talk about the project with its former director, Joe Neigut. Because this isn’t the sort of thing that one gets to access on the regular Johnson Space Center tour, I asked the NASA officials if it would be all right for me to write a blog about my experiences to share with readers, and they kindly agreed, stipulating only a few restrictions on what I was allowed to share in the interests of research integrity.  So here’s what I saw and what I learned.  Continue reading →

Dare mighty things!

Jennifer RaffLeave a comment

Soyuz, carrying three members of Expedition 36 (Fyodor Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg, and Luca Parmitano) has just docked with the International Space Station a few minutes ago (9:10 pm Central Time).

Here is what the docking sounds like.*

Congratulations to all the scientists and engineers who make this happen. Good luck on your mission!

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*from a previous docking, as recorded by Chris Hadfield

Edited to add:

Here is the quote by Theodore Roosevelt that the title references:

It is not the critic who counts; nor the one who points out how the strong person stumbled, or where the doer of a deed could have done better.

The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who does actually strive to do deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends oneself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he or she fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.