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#NASA NO GRAVITY SERIES#
#NASA NO GRAVITY FREE#

Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.Ĭopyright © 2022 NPR. GREENFIELDBOYCE: All that reclaimed water is cleaned and recycled so that astronauts can drink it and sweat it out all over again. Of course, the other 50% is coming from urine. WILLIAMSON: That is about 50% of our water that we do reclaim. She says if you add up all the water that astronauts either sweat out or breathe out as moisture, it's about 1 1/2 liters per day per person. GREENFIELDBOYCE: Jill Williamson is NASA's water subsystems manager for the station. Otherwise, you know, you'll have a buildup of water condensing on all surfaces. JILL WILLIAMSON: We have to reclaim that water. So in the space station, any and all water in the air, like from sweat, has to get collected. GREENFIELDBOYCE: Electronics and water just don't get along. MASSIMINO: And we had some problems where sweat was getting - water was getting getting stuck in there and causing a problem with communication. Still, Massimino remembers one time when sweat got into the communications cap that's fitted out with headphones. Spacewalkers also wear sweat-absorbing fabrics like gloves and a sweat band around the head.

#NASA NO GRAVITY FULL#

GREENFIELDBOYCE: To deal with that heat, spacewalkers wear a special garment, basically long underwear that has tubes full of cooling water. And so you can build up a heavy heat load. They typically run about 6 1/2 hours, and you're moving that whole time typically. MASSIMINO: That's a real athletic event when you're spacewalking. GREENFIELDBOYCE: A towel works fine if you're inside the International Space Station, but if you go outside on a spacewalk. MASSIMINO: The water would just kind of form on your body and not go away necessarily unless you wiped it with a towel. So he says if you're on an exercise bike. GREENFIELDBOYCE: Instead, in microgravity, water tends to cling to whatever surface it's touching. MASSIMINO: Sweat does not fall off of your body, like, because there's no gravity there. He says in space, sweat won't drip off of you. GREENFIELDBOYCE: Mike Massimino is now a professor at Columbia University. MIKE MASSIMINO: I was exercising all the time I was an astronaut, it seemed like. NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: Astronauts have to stay in shape both on the ground and once they're in orbit. Today we are leaving the planet to ponder sweating in space because, as NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports, sweat is a big deal for space travelers.

#NASA NO GRAVITY SERIES#

Glenn’s Zero Gravity Research Facility is the largest of its kind in the world! It is so impressive that is has been named a historic landmark by the National Park Service.This summer, we have been examining sweat in a series of stories on all aspects of perspiration. Their experiments can help improve waste-water management and prevent fires in space. Scientists need the drop tower to see how weightlessness affects different kinds of fluids. They put me in a drop tower that allowed me to free-fall 432 feet, making me almost weightless, for 5.18 seconds. I learned at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio where scientists create microgravity on Earth for inanimate objects including “pupstronauts” like me. Human astronauts fly in a special airplane to learn what it feels like to be weightless.

#NASA NO GRAVITY FREE#

Watch me float! (Credit: NASA) Everything inside the space station floats unless it is tied down, because the station is in a state of free fall as it orbits Earth. I’m experiencing weightlessness inside the free-falling drop package in the drop tower at NASA's Glenn Research Center.

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