Photography Through Empathy: An Interview With Brittani Sensabaugh

What You Should Know About Scott Kelly’s #YearInSpace

1. It’s Actually More Like a Three-Year Mission

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko may have had a year-long stay in space, but the science of their mission will span more than three years. One year before they left Earth, Kelly and Kornienko began participating in a suite of investigations aimed at better understanding how the human body responds to long-duration spaceflight. Samples of their blood, urine, saliva, and more all make up the data set scientists will study. The same kinds of samples continued to be taken throughout their stay in space, and will continue for a year or more once they return.

2. What We Learn is Helping Us Get to Mars

One of the biggest hurdles of getting to Mars is ensuring humans are “go” for a long-duration mission and that crew members will maintain their health and full capabilities for the duration of a Mars mission and after their return to Earth. Scientists have solid data about how bodies respond to living in microgravity for six months, but significant data beyond that timeframe had not been collected…until now. A mission to Mars will likely last about three years, about half the time coming and going to Mars and about half the time on Mars. We need to understand how human systems like vision and bone health are affected by the 12 to 16 months living on a spacecraft in microgravity and what countermeasures can be taken to reduce or mitigate risks to crew members during the flight to and from Mars. Understanding the challenges facing humans is just one of the ways research aboard the space station helps our journey to Mars.

3. The Science Will Take Some Time

While scientists will begin analyzing data from Kelly and Kornienko as soon as they return to Earth, it could be anywhere from six months to six years before we see published results from the research. The scientific process takes time, and processing the data from all the investigations tied to the one-year mission will be no easy task. Additionally, some blood, urine and saliva samples from Kelly and Kornienko will still be stored in the space station freezers until they can be returned on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Early on in the analytical process scientists may see indications of what we can expect, but final results will come long after Kelly and Kornienko land.

4. This Isn’t the First Time Someone Has Spent a Year in Space

This is the first time that extensive research using exciting new techniques like genetic studies has been conducted on very long-duration crew members. Astronaut Scott Kelly is the first American to complete a continuous, year-long mission in space and is now the American who has spent the most cumulative time in space, but it’s not the first time humans have reached this goal. Previously, only four humans have spent a year or more in orbit on a single mission, all aboard the Russian Mir Space Station. They all participated in significant research proving that humans are capable of living and working in space for a year or more.

Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov spent 438 days aboard Mir between January 1994 and March 1995 and holds the all-time record for the most continuous days spent in space.

Cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev spent 380 days on Mir between August 1998 and August 1999.

Cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov completed a 366-day mission from December 1987 to December 1988.

5. International Collaboration is Key

The International Space Station is just that: international. The one-year mission embodies the spirit of collaboration across countries in the effort to mitigate as many risks as possible for humans on long-duration missions. Data collected on both Kelly and Kornienko will be shared between the United States and Russia, and international partners. These kinds of collaborations help increase more rapidly the biomedical knowledge necessary for human exploration, reduce costs, improve processes and procedures, and improve efficiency on future space station missions.

6. So Much Science!

During Kelly’s year-long mission aboard the orbiting laboratory, his participation in science wasn’t limited to the one-year mission investigations. In all, he worked on close to 400 science studies that help us reach for new heights, reveal the unknown, and benefit all of humanity. His time aboard the station included blood draws, urine collection, saliva samples, computer tests, journaling, caring for two crops in the Veggie plant growth facility, ocular scans, ultrasounds, using the space cup, performing runs with the SPHERES robotic satellites, measuring sound, assisting in configuring cubesats to be deployed, measuring radiation, participating in fluid shifts testing in the Russian CHIBIS pants, logging his sleep and much, much more. All of this was in addition to regular duties of station maintenance, including three spacewalks!

7. No More Food in Pouches

After months of eating food from pouches and cans and drinking through straws, Kelly and Kornienko will be able to celebrate their return to Earth with food of their choice. While aboard the space station, their food intake is closely monitored and designed to provide exactly the nutrients they need. Crew members do have a say in their on-orbit menus but often miss their favorite meals from back home. Once they return, they won’t face the same menu limitations as they did in space. As soon as they land on Earth and exit the space capsule, they are usually given a piece of fruit or a cucumber to eat as they begin their initial health checks. After Kelly makes the long flight home to Houston, he will no doubt greatly savor those first meals.

8. After the Return Comes Reconditioning

You’ve likely heard the phrase, “Use it or lose it.” The same thing can be said for astronauts’ muscles and bones. Muscles and bones can atrophy in microgravity. While in space, astronauts have a hearty exercise regimen to fight these effects, and they continue strength training and reconditioning once they return to Earth. They will also participate in Field Tests immediately after landing. Once they are back at our Johnson Space Center, Functional Task Tests will assess how the human body responds to living in microgravity for such a long time. Understanding how astronauts recover after long-duration spaceflight is a critical piece in planning for missions to deep space.

9. Twins Studies Have Researchers Seeing Double

One of the unique aspects of Kelly’s participation in the one-year mission is that he has an identical twin brother, Mark, who is a former astronaut. The pair have taken part in a suite of studies that use Mark as a human control on the ground during Scott’s year-long stay in space. The Twins Study is comprised of 10 different investigations coordinating together and sharing all data and analysis as one large, integrated research team. The investigations focus on human physiology, behavioral health, microbiology/microbiome and molecular/omics. The Twins Study is multi-faceted national cooperation between investigations at universities, corporations, and government laboratories.

10. This Mission Will Help Determine What Comes Next

The completion of the one-year mission and its studies will help guide the next steps in planning for long-duration deep space missions that will be necessary as humans move farther into the solar system. Kelly and Kornienko’s mission will inform future decisions and planning for other long-duration missions, whether they are aboard the space station, a deep space habitat in lunar orbit, or a mission to Mars.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Happy Indian Arrival Day.

May 5, 1838

The first British ship of indenture sailed from Kolkata, India, across the seas and made its way to Guyana. The ship was filled with Indian indentured servants, most of whom were taken by deception, while others were hoping for a new life. Hardly either received what they were expecting. 

Not a day goes by where the question of what being Indo-Caribbean means escapes me. It is something I’m always thinking about, and even become frustrated with myself for not having a straight answer. I feel the answers are written in the bones in my body that were forged by my foremothers who boarded those ships with uncertainty. I want so badly to know what they were thinking. How they were feeling. I wish I had words to describe how my ancestors live inside me but elude me at the same time.

I lament every day the vital information and pieces of self that my great-grandparents possessed but somehow became lost between generations and trauma. Forgotten in sweat that dripped down their backs as they labored under the hot Caribbean sun, producing the sweet crop they were not allowed to taste. 

Today, I will celebrate them instead. I think about the pure bravery of my pregnant maternal great-great-grandmother, boarding a British ship with hundreds of strangers, having only the clothes on her back and her children. I inherited courage from her. 

I think about her daughter, my great-grandmother, who filled her mother’s spot on the plantation when she was old enough. I imagine she must have felt obligated to put her mother’s hardened hands to rest after so many years. I inherited integrity from her. 

I think about my paternal great-grandmother and great-grandfather who traded in their fluent Bhojpuri that flowed like a river when they spoke, for the worker’s patois enforced by belts and the watchful eyes/ears of their white overseer. I inherited humility from them. 

These are legacies of strength. They sit in my core, fill me up, and make my muscles ache all at once. I carry the weight of indenture on me. 178 years ago, Indo-Caribbeans did not exist. 178 years ago, someone decided for me, who I would be. 

–Shabana B.

Welcome to Walachia (aka Romania), 1835, where life is nasty, brutish and … brutish. Welcome to the land of “Aferim!” — a place where the social practices are as harsh as the dusty, desolate landscape in which this Romanian-language picture is set.

Keep reading

Oceania Week / Feminist Friday!

Indian women on the beach at Suva Fiji (before 1906) [Source]

Women in working clothes as indentured labourers Fiji (undated) [Source]

Students with teachers at the Dudley School Fiji (undated) [Source]

When we talk about Asian immigration to Oceania, the predominant narrative is male. Women didn’t go on long voyages to do hard manual labour and make their fortunes, they say…

But they did. Not many, in some cases–an 1861 survey of Australia counted 38,337 men and only eleven women–but in other cases, plenty. 

When I wrote about the Indo-Fijians, I noted that the Brits encouraged women as well as men to immigrate to stabilise the Indian population. These women were young widows, sex workers–and, according to writer Suresh Prasad, victims of kidnapping, some of them children.

And yes, they were abused in their labour. But, as journalist Gaiutra Bahadur has documented in her book Coolie Woman, they sometimes fought back:

Another immigrant, indentured in Fiji in 1906, recounted what happened to an overseer who told an Indian woman that he wanted her: “She asked him to wait till the next day. This woman, with two other women, devised a plan. When he came the next day, two of the women remained at a distance. When he approached the one he had spoken to the previous day, she asked him to take off all his clothes; when he lifted his shirt to take it off, all three women jumped on him and beat him up and threw him into a drain.” In 1916, a male schoolteacher who ended up indentured in Fiji told the tale of how he attacked an Indian driver who procured women for a European overseer. The ex-schoolteacher described what happened when the overseer came to the driver’s defense, with a gun: “The women of the lines, whom I called mother or sister and who treated me well, took up their hoes. He retreated, pleading to the women not to hit him, moving backwards he landed in a sewer pit. The women then threw shit on him. The overseer ran away.”

Women typically worked together in the same gang, plucking weeds in the cane fields, so they were already organized in a group by the plantation. Examples abound of overseers who took liberties being set upon by the women’s gang. According to the Fijian historian Vijay Naidu, “they would strike him to the ground and thrash him as well as do other more nasty things. In one incidence, they pinned the overseer to the ground and took turns at urinating on him. On another occasion, they made a line and walked over the overseer until his excreta came out.”

There’s a graphic account on that page of an overseer named Walter Gill, but the male gaze is a bit overblown there so it reads weirdly.

Of course, the road to gentrification had already started–in fact, I was originally going to do this post about Hannah Dudley, a British missionary who founded girls’ schools in the Indo-Fijian community from 1897 onwards.

Hannah Dudley with students Fiji (c. 1900s) [Source]

But rebellious coolie women makes for a much more interesting story. :)

The halo of a removed flower.

From p. 390-391 of A Debate Between Rev. A. Campbell and Rev. L.N. Rice: On the Action, Subject, Design and Administrator of Christian Baptism (1844). Original from UC Southern Regional Library Facility. Digitized March 20, 2015.

Selfies from the Flight Deck with @pilotmaria

For more fun from the cockpit, follow @pilotmaria on Instagram.

“#MyStory is about strong females in a male-dominated environment — proving that we are just as good as them, believing in ourselves and keeping a positive attitude towards life.” —international airline pilot Maria Pettersson (@pilotmaria)

“I never thought becoming a pilot was an option for me, because of the high costs and the fact that most pilots were men. I worked hard to save for flight training and studied even harder. The toughest challenge has been to get that first flying job. There were many unemployed pilots fighting for the same job. It took me years. I’m very lucky to be where I am today, flying a young fleet of Boeing 737s around Europe.

“With my selfies I try to catch the moment and the mood I am in. The smiles you see are real and represent the feeling I am having right there. My best advice for taking a top-notch selfie would be: dare to be silly, embarrass yourself and smile — smile with the whole world.”

SEA URCHIN SPINES

Amaze!

Robert Oppenheimer meets Albert Einstein at Princeton in 1947

via reddit

Germany had so much renewable energy on May 8, 2016, that it had to pay citizens to use electricity. It was so windy and sunny that turbines and solar power sources were supercharged, output exceeded demand, and prices went negative, so customers were actually paid to consume energy. Source