Gadgetory

oh hey that's me tumbling through space throughout my career I've met a few astronauts but I never really got to see how they train for missions today I've convinced NASA to show me how astronauts learn to do their jobs before going to space and that means doing a lot of simulations to learn the basics and also to prepare for the worst-case scenarios we're here at the systems engineering simulator facility it's basically fancy talk for we're gonna drive some spaceships NASA wants to go into deep space and potentially to Mars and astronauts are going to need a way to get around fast when they're on the surface of another planet best way to do that a monster Rover I'm in a rover right now or at least part of a rover it's a simulation used so that crewmembers can test out what it'll be like to ride around on surfaces of different planets since NASA wants to go to Mars we are in jezero crater on Mars right now which they think was a lake bed at one time so of course it's somewhere we're interested in exploring further in the future and so you have your hand controller there that is going to control driving so that's both acceleration and steering for the rover now this isn't like your normal car we have way more wheels right it's very pretty wheel three you have 12 wheels total so six sets of two the 12 wheels can move in 360 degrees that means the rover is capable of basically moving in any direction forward back sideways even spin around in a circle it takes a while for the wheels to adjust though so it felt kind of slow and you also have to keep in mind that we have a third of Earth's gravity here so it's gonna it's gonna drive a little squirrely sometimes a little more bouncy and you know if I want to move forward I guess right I've run into vehicle we can't leave we're stuck on Mars forever driving in a nice comfy Rover is fun and all but it's not that immersive of an experience you're kind of just sitting still moving a joystick plus it's not really practical right now since astronauts won't be going to Mars for many years but something that is a big part of astronaut training these days is spacewalks this is the neutral buoyancy lab being underwater is the closest thing we have on earth to recreating the sensation of zero-g that giant structure you see inside is an actual replica of the International Space Station for testing astronauts have to suit up outside the pool with a lot of help and then get slowly lowered in unfortunately I won't be going in the pool today but we have some tech that might supplement for the time being I'm headed to Johnson Space Center's virtual reality lab it's where NASA trains astronauts to learn how to do their spacewalks first up learning how to maneuver outside the station I have to replace a battery one of the things you can do here with this model since you're in VR you can actually figure out what it's gonna take to get from the airlock or from your current worksite out to a new worksite what you're going to do is we're going to start you out here on the truss you're right around s0 which is one two trust segments it turns out replacing a battery in space is way harder than changing out the batteries in your remote it's a two-person job with one astronaut pulling out the old battery and the other handing over a new unit sounds easy right Pizza cake VR is great at showing you exactly where everything is going to be out there and whether you have a good enough wingspan got it now you can see you are climbing on the handrail Wow okay so I want to go there's my destination yeah I look off to your right right yellow yeah you're good at this I think they're testing for a new astronaut class coming out you know what you should just go ahead and I'm clearly the front-runner now all right I'm here is that it that's it for now but what would happen if your spacewalk didn't go smoothly astronauts are always tethered to the ISS during spacewalks but NASA always plans for the remote possibility of someone getting disconnected well I was going to experience that terrifying scenario by getting knocked off the station and then I had to get back before you know I burned up in the atmosphere when you go outside in case they ever become separated from the space station so they don't float off right it's gonna be bad they come up with a safety device that's basically a jet backpack it's called safer it's actually named NASA thinks of safer as a life jacket in space it's more like a backpack with jet thrusters that are steered by hand controller so far safer has never been needed for an actual emergency and that's good because this is a pretty dangerous scenario and you don't have a lot of time to get back and what about how much fuel do you have before you run out approximately five to ten minutes with a fuel depending on how aggressive you are this is if you're racing against the clock kind of thing yes yes you can't just take your time out there you need to get back out there for more than say 15 minutes it gets very unlikely you're gonna rescue so there I am that tiny astronaut hanging out at the Quest joint airlock and there I am getting farther and farther away from safety okay we're gonna make you wait just a little bit now before power up the unit they leave you spinning for a little bit because you wouldn't be able to get your bearings right away you've got to slow yourself down and get yourself under control I may not also be screaming now you would have come out and you would power it on am I suppose it's gonna bring you to a it's gonna cancel out your rotations okay you'll see yourself coming to a stop all right so now I need to around in fine station the station definitely to my left okay so y'all to your left okay you'll want to pitch down just a little bit you see that round like the horseshoe shape thing that is ear lock so you want to point right back at that spot now that I'm facing the station it's time to switch modes you want to go over to translation mode that means I can move forward and back or left and right in a straight line and now I'll start moving towards it okay here we go I think we might have changed the game definitely get it it's a slow process again you don't want to go fast am I going to you guys know you're not going to in space a little bit of thrust goes a long way all you need is just a slight push to send you going in the right direction again the translations are very slow okay but George Clooney moved was so much faster just reach out if you can grab structure you're saying and that was the easiest case scenario other simulations have astronauts moving away from the station four times faster than that and at night yes right at night well how long did it take me to get back what I have actually made it okay you're good yeah clearly I'm a space walk master but there's still a whole ton of things astronauts have to do that I haven't trained for like working the robotic arm or doing lab experiments in zero-gravity in fact it's a two-year training process before you can even be assigned to a mission these simulations are just the tip of the iceberg I would have had you climb further but we weren't expecting you to do it very well at it we didn't want to give you too much people have a lot of problems with that