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NASA Astronauts Discuss Their Mission in Space

NASA Astronauts Discuss Their Mission in Space

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Speaker 1 (00:00):

I feel the liftoff. The clock has started.

(00:00)
Liftoff. We have liftoff.

(00:00)
Roger. Zero-G and I feel fine.

(00:00)
Liftoff on Apollo 11.

(00:00)
Godspeed John Glenn.

(00:00)
Listen, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

(00:00)
Roger Tranquility. We copy on the ground.

(00:00)
New possibilities are opening up for scientific cooperation between countries.

(00:00)
2, 1, 0. Liftoff. Liftoff Americans return to space as Discovery clears the tower.

(00:00)
Discovery go at throttle up.

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Discovery roger, go for deploy.

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Thanks to you and everybody in the shuttle program. The crew is go for launch.

(00:00)
[inaudible 00:00:48].

(00:00)
We have followed in their footsteps to [inaudible 00:00:51].

Raegan Scharfetter (01:03):

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to NASA's Johnson Space Center. I'm Raegan Scharfetter, here today joined by NASA's SpaceX Crew-8 crew members who just recently returned home after a 232-day stay aboard the International Space Station. From my left, we have Commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, and mission specialist Jeanette Epps. Roscosmos Cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin was also part of this dynamic crew but will not be joining us today as he has since returned home to Russia.

(01:38)
I know we have a lot of folks here eager to talk to the crew, but before we hop into our questions, I just want to first turn it over to them for some opening remarks.

Michael Barratt (01:47):

Okay, thanks very much, Raegan. I'll start. We're really happy to be here, in general we're happy to be back on the planet at all because we stayed a little bit longer than we expected. We really are not complete without our fourth crew member, Alexander Grebenkin. Sasha, as we called him. Seat four. And we're sorry he's not here, but I think we kind of carry his very jovial spirit with us. He was every bit essential to Crew-8's success.

(02:12)
One thing to start off up front, I know there may be some interest in our post-flight medical event where we diverted to a hospital. You know, space flight is still something we don't fully understand. We're finding things that we don't expect sometimes, and this was one of those times and we're still piecing things together on this. And so to maintain medical privacy and to let our processes go forward in an orderly manner, this is all we're going to say about that event at this time. That leaves us 235 days, three hours and 35 minutes of Crew-8 experience that is open to your question. So thank you guys for being here.

Matthew Dominick (02:48):

I still laugh inside. I was sending messages to friends from Space Station and even saying it now that we're back on Earth. I'd send a message, "Hey, we're going to cover that. We'll cover it when you're back on Earth." Just the opportunity to have a life where you could say, "I'll talk to you when I get back on Earth," just makes me giggle. I get goosebumps over and over again. And so saying that here, and here you talk about, "Hey, these folks are back on Earth" and it just makes me feel super grateful for the Mission Control Centers around the world that kept us safe, right? So we go to the Space Station and once we're there, everybody else is maintaining the Space Station, flying the Space Station for us around the world and keeping us safe. And we sleep well at night knowing they're doing it. So extreme grateful and gratitude towards the folks that made that happen. And we're of course excited to be back on Earth and to answer your questions.

Jeanette Epps (03:33):

I'd like to second that, Matt. I'm very grateful for all the centers and everyone that we had a chance to work with, but also our families and all the people who supported us through our mission. We had an amazing mission and I can't stress that we worked hard, but we also enjoyed our time there, thoroughly. And I want to thank all the families who really kept everything going and moving while we were gone, and especially the folks at NASA in the office who helped keep us going in space, providing clothes, making sure we had everything we need. So thank you and we're grateful for you.

Raegan Scharfetter (04:14):

All right, thank you so much crew. We'll go ahead and get started with our Q&A portion. We'll get started here in the room through our phone bridge and also through social media using the hashtag #AskNASA. We do want to remind everyone who is dialed into our phone bridge to press star one, to insert yourself into our question queue and star two to take yourself out. And with that, we'll go ahead and begin in the room with Gina Sunseri with ABC News.

Gina Sunseri (04:40):

Gina Sunseri, ABC News. Thanks for addressing the elephant in the room. But I know you said you're not comfortable talking about this, but medical research is key to the Space Station's mission. So why do you not want to talk about what the issue was when you landed and why you had to make a detour for an extra checkup?

Michael Barratt (04:59):

Well, to be sure I did not say I was uncomfortable talking about it. I said we're not going to talk about it. As you may know, I'm a medical doctor. Space medicine is my passion to be real honest and how we adapt, how we experience human spaceflight is something that we all take very seriously. In the fullness of time, we will allow this to come out and document it. For now, medical privacy is very important to us. We maintain that always in many things we do. The same with due process. So both of those really negate our ability to talk about it today. So that's really it for today.

Gina Sunseri (05:28):

Okay, that's fine. One of the things that I've heard from other astronauts coming back is about the readjustment time when you land. Chris Hatfield said it was one day for every day he was in space. Do you guys find it's the same or are you fully recovered yet?

Matthew Dominick (05:43):

We're not at 235 days yet.

Michael Barratt (05:46):

Not even close.

Matthew Dominick (05:47):

I haven't been back, I think we're at what, plus 14, 15, somewhere in there.

Michael Barratt (05:50):

14. We left…

Matthew Dominick (05:52):

I've been fascinated by it. I'm a first-time flyer and fascinated by the re-adaptation, big words. And it's the little things, the big things you expect, being disoriented, being dizzy. But the little things like just sitting in a hard chair, my backside is not really sat in a hard thing for 235 days and is part of some research activities. I've had to go sit on a bike for a long period of time, but it's rather uncomfortable. Right? And I did not expect that. That wasn't in a book I read, "Hey, you're going to space. It's going to be hard to sit on a hard chair."

(06:26)
It's been entertaining. I remember the third or fourth day after we got back, we were sitting outside in our patio with my family eating dinner and I wanted to be a part of the family and be there with the activities, but I could not sit on that hard chair anymore. So I just laid a towel down on the ground outside at our patio and I laid down so I could be part of the conversation, but I was not going to sit anymore. So little things like that are surprising to me, but every day is a cool progression in that regard.

(06:53)
One of my other crewmates mentioned, or she came back before I did and she said, "Yeah, today I'm at a hundred percent. Today I'm a hundred percent." But the next day felt better. So it is a very slow progression.

Jeanette Epps (07:05):

Well, and everyone's different and that's the part that you can't predict. You don't know, like one issue Matt may have, I may not have, but I may have several things that he doesn't have. And we did different experiments on board. And so I did a lot of T-2 and A-RED. And he did different things. So we don't know how we're going to respond when we return and how fast. And every day is better than the day before. And that's all we can predict. Every day is better.

Raegan Scharfetter (07:36):

All right, we're going to go over to our phone bridge starting with Jonathan Serrie with Fox News.

Jonathan Serrie (07:43):

Thanks so much for doing this. Since you all are willing subjects on the effects of long duration space flight, what would you say are the health effects that we as humans have learned how to overcome and what would you say are the biggest challenges that we still need to resolve for long duration space missions?

Matthew Dominick (08:06):

Ask the medical expert in the room.

Michael Barratt (08:08):

Well, it is kind of what I do, and yet I can tell you that there's some answers we don't have. So some we do. We're pretty good about maintaining bone and muscle in flight now because of our countermeasure suite. In fact, when we first fielded the complete set in 2009, we saw kind of a quantum increase in health metrics and that was everything from bone, muscle, aerobic capacity to immune function, just making a habitable station with really good countermeasures. So if you were to ask me, can I countermeasure my way out of zero gravity for the time it takes to get people to Mars and land them safely, I think I would say, yeah. Give me the same loads, the same equipment, and at the same time do it. I think we're kind of there.

(08:49)
Some of the other ones that are a little bit more physics-based, that we can't load ourselves out of, radiation being one of those, psychological issues. Those require other solutions and those are probably the areas and I would say food sources that have to be wholesome for five years. Those are areas where we still have some work to do.

(09:08)
You guys are entitled to an opinion too, by the way.

Matthew Dominick (09:11):

Not when you have the expert here, but of course I do. It is been fascinating. It's been fascinating seeing what we do. I was part of an experiment where we were trying to figure out some of those things, what we can get rid of. I was part of an experiment where I didn't use the treadmill at all on Space Station for the eight months we were up there. And so I've come back to my first time, the last time I walked was when we walked across that causeway into the rocket and the first time I walked after that was when we got out of the spaceship. So it's been pretty impressive what we're able to do.

Jeanette Epps (09:42):

I couldn't agree more. I think on the countermeasures that we have are, I mean, are evident and just looking at our data as we came back. But future missions, I think radiation, like you said is the big thing.

Michael Barratt (09:54):

I guess I'd add one thing is that we keep finding new stuff. We didn't know anything about the neuro-

Michael Barratt (10:00):

… [inaudible 00:10:00] changes until 2009, and we realized it's a big thing, it affects critical neuroanatomy and it was right in front of us for decades of space flight. We didn't see it. We've had some other discoveries about jugular venous flow and how the heart regulates and immune function that's… All this stuff, we're just kind of discovering. Blood hemolysis. So expect that to continue. Even though it's right in front of us, the fact that we have a well-equipped laboratory with a lot of people flying long duration, we are going to continue to find new things. So just kind of expect this road to Mars to be paved with new discoveries, whether we like it or not.

Raegan Scharfetter (10:37):

Yeah. Excellent. Very thorough answers. Now we'll go to Marcia Dunn with the Associated Press.

Marcia Dunn (10:45):

Yes, hi. Dr. Barratt, I understand you don't want to discuss the hospital stay. However, could you, at least in broad terms, give us some insight into the symptoms that were exhibited, and as the crew's doctor, how concerned you were about the whole episode? Thank you.

Michael Barratt (11:06):

Marcia, it's always good to hear your voice. And no, I will not express any of those concerns or details. Again, medical privacy and the processes we have going on right now negate our ability to do that. So, sorry.

Raegan Scharfetter (11:20):

All right, thank you. And we at NASA Public Affairs also echo his statement. Thank you. We'll toss it to social media now. Leah on X asks, " What was it like returning to Earth? Did your legs and arms feel heavy? What was your first drink like?"

Matthew Dominick (11:41):

Everyone talked about, "Hey, things are going to feel heavy," and that was true. You knew it coming. I think that the weirdest thing that really, and it didn't really hit me until about four or five days later, was picking up something that I had on the space station all the time, and that was I went and… NASA lets us check out the cameras for training and practice and I wanted to check something out. So I went and checked out one of our cameras that we have on Space Station for some photos now that I've been back on Earth, and picking up that same object that I had been holding so much on Space Station and feeling it here on Earth was crazy to me. I've picked up other things, bottles of water, whatever, I expected those to have mass. But to me, it was not just the mass, but the rotational moments of inertia that I was so used to managing or moving around. It just really threw me off.

Jeanette Epps (12:27):

I have to agree. Even just the weight of your head and trying to hold it up and some of the muscle pains that you'll have because you haven't held your head up in, what, eight months almost for us. And even like you were talking about, our backside not having sat on a seat in eight months, your backside is going to hurt. So the weight and the heaviness of things just is surprising. It was just different coming back. But, you know-

Raegan Scharfetter (12:55):

Are you also laying on your back at dinnertime?

Jeanette Epps (12:58):

Oh, laying any chance I got. But you have to move and you have to exercise every day, otherwise you don't get those gains. So you have to move regardless of how exhausted you feel.

Raegan Scharfetter (13:12):

All right, cool. Now we'll jump back into our phone bridge with Andrew Donovan with NewsChannel 9 Syracuse.

Andrew Donovan (13:22):

Welcome back, everyone. I'm obviously in Syracuse, so my questions will be for Dr. Epps and they will be about her hometown. I'm wondering what kind of love she felt from Syracuse while she was in the International Space Station, if she was in touch with anyone while in Syracuse, and what life is like now in this transitional phase of… Obviously it's a little uncomfortable to sit on a chair, so are there any limitations on your lifestyle right now?

Jeanette Epps (13:45):

Well, to start out, I cannot thank my hometown more. I had so much love that was poured out from Syracuse. I ended up talking with so many people, but my friend, Hilary Hunter, Mike Pachenko, people that I went to high school with, and at Le Moyne College there talking with Dr. LeMura and Dr. Colbert. There's just so much that goes on in Syracuse that deserves attention, and one of the things is Le Moyne College. Hindsight is 20/20, but what a gem we have in Syracuse, New York where we have people who really care about students and really want to move this society forward, and that's Le Moyne College. And the nice thing about the university, the college there, is that the number of students that they've helped and moved forward, from me and my twin sister to getting us to the University of Maryland, it just goes up every year and they have a heart and a passion for it.

(14:52)
My friends, Hilary and Mike are just two gems from high school. Hilary was our class president, I was her vice president, and who knew that all these years later, I'm not going to tell you when we graduated, but all these years later that we would've shared something like space together. And I can't thank Syracuse enough. Life is different for me now just in the sense of how much I appreciate everything that Syracuse, Le Moyne, Hilary, and my friends there have done for me. So life is definitely better and I'm looking forward to what we do in the future.

Raegan Scharfetter (15:31):

All right, excellent. We'll go to Jackie Wattles with CNN.

Jackie Wattles (15:36):

Hi, folks. Thank you so much for doing this. It's great to see you all back on Earth. I wanted to ask, given a recent OIG report about leaks in the Zvezda module, the Russian Zvezda module, I wanted to ask you all about that. I understand that module has had to remain mostly sealed off, but have any of you had a chance to go inspect any of these cracks or leaks, or how else might it have affected your stay on the space station? And I'm curious what you all are hearing from your Russian colleagues about it. Thanks so much.

Michael Barratt (16:10):

Well, I can start that. First of all, we have a very open and transparent relation with our Russian cosmonaut compadres at the other end of the station. We know what they're doing, they know what we're doing. It's important. We're all on the same station together and it's a very integrated crew. And with the cracks in this, what we call the PRK, the [foreign language 00:16:31]. Well, not [foreign language 00:16:32], it is a transfer module between visiting vehicles in the main module of the Russian segment. The station is not young, it's been up there for quite a while, and you expect some wear and tear and we're seeing that in the form of some cracks that have formed. They have been very open about that.

(16:47)
The way it's affected us mostly is, as they go in and open that to unload a cargo vehicle that's docked to it, they have also taken time to inspect and try to repair when they can. We've taken a very conservative approach to close a hatch between the US side and the Russian side during those time periods. It's not a comfortable thing, but it is the best agreement between all the smart people on both sides. And it's something that we as a crew live with and enact, and we've actually made it… I wouldn't say normalized necessarily, but it's something that we accept and we perform as we are directed by both sides. There is no deficit of information. We all know what each other knows, no question about it. But again, the station is not young and we will expect to see more wear and tear in various other places as well. The Russian side is the oldest side of the space station.

Matthew Dominick (17:41):

Like I said when we opened up, we're in good hands. The mission control centers around the world are awesome. They kept us informed. They're got amazing engineers working the problem and I'm thankful that they are.

Raegan Scharfetter (17:53):

All right. We'll hop back into our phone bridge going to Marcia Smith with SpacePolicyOnline.

Marcia Smith (17:59):

Thanks so much. I'd like to ask Matt and Mike to talk a little bit about the scrub spacewalks. Could each of you describe exactly what went wrong? And psychologically how did you feel? You were all suited up and everything and in there, and then of course neither of them could be accomplished. What was that like to be in there and suddenly have to cancel it?

Matthew Dominick (18:22):

I would start off by saying, psychologically, we were right there. You spend years training. You listen to your instructors that are awesome here at Johnson Space Center and around the planet, helping you get ready to go do a spacewalk. You stay up late at night studying to get ready for a spacewalk, or in the NBL training over and over again, studying your procedures. So of course you're going to… There's no surprise there that there's frustration that you just put all that effort, all those years, and you're in the suit, ready to go outside and then you don't. So clearly frustration would be psychologically there, and that's obviously how I felt.

(18:55)
And then it's one of those things. Your space suit that you're wearing is… I don't really think about it as a space suit in that case. I think about it as a space ship. Everything you have, it's a little baby spaceship, and you're going to go outside your space station and it's got to provide you with everything that the Dragon does or the Space Station does, except it's a little mini thing just for you. It's your personal private spaceship. And so a thousand things have to be correct, and that day we didn't have all a thousand things ready to go, little pieces of the puzzle. And so we made the right decision, the right call, not to go outside.

Michael Barratt (19:26):

I would say that we've actually gotten maybe more comfortable with aborted launches than aborted spacewalks. We had the Soyuz that aborted about, what, a minute before a launch while we were up there. That's a big pucker factor. But you don't take a ship into space unless she's good and ready. The same is true with every system with a space suit. And so we had two of those events where there were suit issues or a hardware malfunction, or in our case, a spewing umbilical, which was quite dramatic actually. So it was a no-brainer. We're not ready to do this. The hardware is talking

Michael Barratt (20:00):

… do us, as we often say, quoting Wayne Hale. It was talking really loud those two days, so it was a pretty clear indication. And like I say, this happens, so…

Raegan Scharfetter (20:09):

All right. So obviously, frustrations are just an occasional part of the human experience, but on the opposite side of that, something that gave all of us so much joy during your mission is your photography, Matt. So has this always been a passion of yours? Or is it something you developed while you were on station seeing Earth as this tiny blue marble?

Matthew Dominick (20:36):

Oh. I mean, it wasn't just my photography. There was a lot of photography happening on space station. I saw the number earlier today, something like 600 some odd thousand pictures between the whole crew just on our Expedition 71 part, which is a lot of inventory, especially since we had some new cameras on board, which have bigger file sizes. So my apologies to our folks who do all the processing. How much data that we generated was quite a bit. I think we had to go buy some new hard drives. We were also super lucky as a crew to have some really incredible phenomena. So we're at a solar maximum going on, so the aurora was…

Michael Barratt (21:13):

Insane.

Matthew Dominick (21:13):

Insane. It's one of the top search terms on the internet this year. We had a solar eclipse. What else? What other phenomena-

Michael Barratt (21:23):

Comet.

Matthew Dominick (21:23):

We had a comet. Like, "Come on. A comet?"

Michael Barratt (21:25):

[inaudible 00:21:25]. That was… Yeah.

Matthew Dominick (21:26):

I get to see a comet, incredible aurora, solar eclipse, and I think we all felt an immense sense of responsibility to share what we see with… What are we at? 600 some odd people who have been in orbit in human history. I feel an immense sense of responsibility to share what we see to the best of our abilities with everyone on Earth.

Raegan Scharfetter (21:48):

All right. Let's go back into our phone bridge with Stephen Clark with Ars Technica.

Stephen Clark (21:56):

Thank you for taking my question. Welcome back to Earth to Crew-8. I think my question's a follow-up to Marsha's question earlier about the spacewalk. Dr. Barratt, you mentioned the spewing umbilical. Just curious, have you heard any results of the investigation into that? Is that a consequence of hardware aging, suits aging, or procedural error? Or what caused that? And for Matt also, on the first spacewalk attempt back in June, NASA reported a suit discomfort issue. What were you feeling in the suit as you were preparing to go outside? Thanks.

Michael Barratt (22:36):

Well, to start with the leak that we had, it definitely wasn't a procedural error. We have a lot of people watching us walk through the procedures, and so everything was pretty tight there. But it was definitely a hardware issue. There was a little poppet valve on the interface that didn't quite seat. So really the question became why didn't that seat. I think we solved that problem by changing out the whole umbilical. Over the fullness of time and doing a lot of troubleshooting, we realized that was probably the best thing to do.

(23:05)
By that time, we had gotten to a period in our mission where it wasn't really practical to start the whole EVA campaign again, so we stopped that. But it's not a secret. The system is not young. None of our spacesuits are spring chickens, as we would say. And so we will expect to see some hardware issues with repeated use and not really upgrading. So again, it's one of those things that we are always at every second or every point in a process ready to stop or ready to turn another direction or work a contingency procedure, and that is exactly what we did.

Matthew Dominick (23:42):

With regards to your second question, we're still reviewing it and trying to figure all the details out.

Raegan Scharfetter (23:46):

All righty. Vida on X asks, "How do you see life now? And how has the mission changed your outlook on Earth before versus after?"

Michael Barratt (24:01):

That one [inaudible 00:24:01].

Jeanette Epps (24:01):

Gosh. Well, I just wanted to add one thing. You and Tracy handled your situation with… Just they deserve… It's commendable and it was amazing how, I mean, if you think about it, how Tracy got the hatch closed and got the SCU back on and how they handled the situation. So we had an interesting time on the station to say the least. But the work that was done was amazing and the way things were handled, I don't think Tracy and Mike could have done anything better, or I mean, Matt, in any situation.

(24:33)
So looking at all these crazy events and cool things that happened, for me, my outlook has changed in such a way that rather than getting to this major event in life and feeling like, "Oh, what's next?" I feel like I really want to take it all in and digest what just happened. It was amazing, beautiful seeing the Earth from that vantage point, but for me, one of the big things is that now I want to see trees. I want to see people. I want to touch things and experience things here on Earth more than I did before. And it's just made me appreciate things I think just a little bit more, and the simple things, not the big things, but the simple things in life that make me happy and hopefully make my friends and family happy as well, just seeing each other. So… [inaudible 00:25:24].

Michael Barratt (25:24):

I will say one of Jeanette's superpowers is communicating the beauty of where she is at any time. And she did that really well from station. And I bet she's doing that really well from the ground now.

Matthew Dominick (25:35):

I want to travel. I mean, I've always liked traveling and seeing the Earth, but there were places that weren't necessarily on my list of places to travel that are now. I remember I have distinct memories of screaming over the Earth and looking out the window and seeing parts of South America that I had never thought would be a cool place to travel, but the mountains there in the western side of South America is incredibly beautiful from space. So I want to go see it in-person. There are a whole bunch on the list, but we don't have enough time to talk about it.

Raegan Scharfetter (26:04):

Yeah. I can only imagine. We'll go back to our phone bridge with Robert Pearlman with collectSPACE.

Robert Pearlman (26:13):

Thank you for taking my questions. At the end of your mission, you had an extended, I think, about two weeks of weather delays before you could come back to Earth. And I'm curious if that was a point of frustration? Or did you see that as bonus days in space? And how are those extra days handled? Do those become extra days off where you can just look out the window? Or do they put you back to work? Or how does that manage that when you don't know when you're going to be able to come home?

Matthew Dominick (26:45):

I think bonus days in space for sure. That was definitely there, but I mean, we're humans too, and so you're like, "Are we going home tomorrow?" Called my wife like, "Hey. We're coming home tomorrow," and then we're not and then, "We're coming home tomorrow… Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Next week, maybe." So that part was entertaining to deal with, but it was definitely bonus time in space. We really enjoyed the fact that we got to fly with more people. Right? Initially, we were supposed to come home before Soyuz, the Soyuz turnover, and we ended up coming home after the Soyuz turnover. And that means we got to fly with more people in space, which is awesome. Mike talked about pre-flight how many people he's had a chance to be in space with and watch them and how people interact with space. It was awesome to see how other people deal with the microgravity environment. So it was definitely bonus time, but also, I mean, to be honest, it was like, "Are you going?" "Nope," back and forth can be entertaining.

Michael Barratt (27:39):

Probably the more frustrated group was our families.

Matthew Dominick (27:41):

Yeah.

Michael Barratt (27:42):

Because I mean, a lot of us had projects that we were doing, and if we did wave off, "Okay. I get another day to film some of the medical videos I was doing or some of the training shots and things like that." The vibe on station is really good right now. So not every cell in my body wanted to leave, to be real honest, but it was time to come home and quit burning the resources up there for sure.

Matthew Dominick (28:02):

Yeah.

Jeanette Epps (28:02):

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I can't add anything to that because that's exactly the vibe on orbit. It was beautiful though.

Raegan Scharfetter (28:10):

All right. Well, to tack onto that, Goswami on Instagram asks, "What were some of your favorite moments as a crew?"

Jeanette Epps (28:19):

The Olympic video.

Michael Barratt (28:20):

That was… Thank you to Matthew Dominic.

Matthew Dominick (28:23):

Yeah. It was a team effort.

Jeanette Epps (28:24):

The director.

Michael Barratt (28:24):

But that was hilarious.

Jeanette Epps (28:26):

It was a lot of fun.

Raegan Scharfetter (28:27):

We enjoyed it down here. That's for sure.

Matthew Dominick (28:30):

I'm sure the B-roll remaining cuts from that are also entertaining. There was a lot of video made there.

Raegan Scharfetter (28:36):

Yeah. I would be interested in seeing the blooper reel on that.

Matthew Dominick (28:40):

Yeah.

Michael Barratt (28:40):

I think there were probably hundreds of magic moments, a lot of them around the galley table because we were a food-centric crew. But I do remember one evening when Matt and Laurel and I were in the cupola and we were doing a big transverse cut down the African continent. It was nighttime and the whole continent was just shrouded in clouds of lightning. It was just this spectacular show. And Matt had the presence of mind to start playing the song Africa by Toto. And so we're just watching this lightning, this incredible show.

Matthew Dominick (29:13):

Just blowing up Africa.

Michael Barratt (29:14):

Yeah. And blowing up Africa. And I will never forget that, so..

Raegan Scharfetter (29:18):

I was actually looking at your X account yesterday and saw the red sprites. I was curious if you ever learned anything more about those.

Matthew Dominick (29:28):

Yes. Thank you, internet and NASA.

Michael Barratt (29:32):

Well.

Matthew Dominick (29:33):

We were lucky. I was just leaving the camera on intervalometer and taking some nighttime lapses and was going through images and actually folks on the ground would go through all of our… All of our imagery that we take outside is shared with the world publicly. I don't remember the URL. I think it's EOL something. Search it on the internet. But you can go look at every image that goes out. And folks on the ground had just gone through. The general public goes through these things and finds a little red sprite, which I thought was pretty cool.

Matthew Dominick (30:00):

Cool. And so then that set off a mission where, again, I'm sorry to the hard drives at NASA and the team that had to go through it, but I would just leave the camera on [inaudible 00:30:08] a lot at night trying to get lightning to capture red sprites. And so kept learning more about those and deep dove into that. And some experts who already work at NASA who studied those started reaching out to me and sending me emails. So it was pretty awesome.

Raegan Scharfetter (30:20):

Excellent.

Michael Barratt (30:20):

That was kind of like a Sprite magnet though, because a lot of people fly and never see one or never capture one.

Matthew Dominick (30:26):

We've probably got, I think, four or five that I know of. I haven't gone through all 300 some-odd thousand.

Jeanette Epps (30:31):

We have to give our ESA counterparts credit too. They were looking at these sprites as well that come out of the lightning storms. So there's a lot of people at NASA and ESA working on these issues, so it's important to capture them so that they can do further analysis.

Raegan Scharfetter (30:47):

Yeah.

Matthew Dominick (30:47):

[inaudible 00:30:48].

Raegan Scharfetter (30:48):

Excellent. All right. Let's go back to our phone bridge with Bill Harwood, with CBS News.

Bill Harwood (30:54):

Oh, yeah. Thank you very much. This is a question for Mike. You mentioned that the water leak in the spacesuit umbilical was, I think you said it was dramatic. Does that mean like a trickle? Was it more like a hosepipe? I'm trying to picture how much water was spewing out into the airlock. And the second part of that question is they're talking about doing some EVAs in January. I mean, is the umbilical work as far as you know, and I realize you might not be directly in the picture today, but is that umbilical work and resolution pretty much complete? Do we think the suits are ready to go now? Just curious what you know about that and then the nature of the leak. Thanks.

Michael Barratt (31:33):

Yeah, no worries. Hey, Bill, good to hear your voice as well. So it was not a trivial leak, and we've got footage and anybody who was watching NASA TV at the time could see there was basically a snowstorm, a blizzard spewing from the airlock because we had already had the hatch open, so we were seeing flakes of ice in the airlock. Tracy was seeing a lot of them on her helmet, on her gloves, and whatnot. So it was a very dramatic is the right word, to be real honest. I think literally Tracy's actions were nowhere short of heroic, to be able to re-mate that umbilical with her hands covered with ice and kind of being vision impaired and getting the airlock closed was kind of me grabbing her legs and using her as an end effector to lever that thing close, and she just made it happen. So.

(32:19)
Yeah, there was a bit of drama. Everything worked out fine. And again, normal processes and procedures saved our bacon. I think our suits are in good shape. We, in fact, did some work on them just before we left as well, but I think we're leaving them a brand new umbilical, a really clean interface on that side where we had the problem and the suits are charged and really ready to go. So I think we are more than ready for the next EVA campaign. I just wish we were doing it.

Raegan Scharfetter (32:46):

There's always next time. And we'll go back to Marsha Dunn with the Associated Press.

Marsha Dunn (32:56):

I'm wondering, did any of the three of you offer to spend a year in space and give up your seat for Senator Butch so that they could get home quicker? Was that even part of the discussion at one point? Thanks.

Michael Barratt (33:12):

Not part of the formal discussion, but any time we know that there is a possibility, ask Dr. Frank Rubio, that things may happen that will cause you to spend time up there a lot longer than you expected. Mark Vande Hei is another one. So that is always kind of discussed with people ahead of time. If there's a possibility, would you be willing? Just kind of the gauge how to make those operational decisions. But we really didn't get to that point. Obviously, Butch and Sonny left for a three-hour tour, so to speak, an eight-day mission, which turned out to be longer. But happily, they're both space station veterans. They're not just veterans, but very good at what they do. And it wasn't that difficult for them to eventually, as the situation unfolded, realize that they were going to spend that much time up there, acclimatized to it, and they're basically long-duration crew members now. It was a fairly organic change for them, so we really didn't have to go into that discussion.

Raegan Scharfetter (34:11):

All right. Amir on Instagram asked, "During your time in space, what was the most surprising thing you learned? And that can just regard anything you know about each other that you thought was interesting or just the mission in general?"

Michael Barratt (34:25):

That's a great question.

Jeanette Epps (34:28):

There's so many things. One of the things that I did was I tried to talk to as many people as I could, and we had this new system where we could have audio and visual and chat with people, but showing people a view out the window and their reaction to seeing that was a surprise to me, how much interest people who never really thought about space, how much interest they had in seeing out the window, and just the gasp that they would have, just seeing that view. So I think telling people about space and talking about it through Matt's photos, through Mike's videos, through all of these different means are necessary. And just to get people involved and know what's happening in space. A lot of people actually want to know more than I was surprised that they wanted to know. Very surprising.

Raegan Scharfetter (35:24):

Well, that's a great transition into our last question, which does come from Kelly on X, who asks, "What would you say to the younger generation of folks who are aspiring to become astronauts one day?"

Jeanette Epps (35:40):

I say go for it. But there's a lot of work that has to be done. I think a lot of kids think that things happen overnight. They don't. You put in the time and effort, you do the studying, learn what you don't know and then try to learn more. Find people who are immersed in it, people who know the medical side like Mike, and understand what they're getting into. And I think they need to pursue their dream. You may not make it to space, but you will make it way further than if you had never pursued that dream.

Raegan Scharfetter (36:19):

Well, that's a great note to end on. So I think that we'll go ahead and conclude today's news conference. Again, I just want to extend a big thank you to the crew for joining us today, and we're so excited to have you back here on Earth. I also want to send a big thank you to all of our participating media, and for all of you who joined us today on NASA+. We'll see you next time.

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