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Week 2: NASA Astronaut, Colonel Jerry L. Ross

1. Collingwood Intermediate School

How long does it take to put on a space suit?

In total it takes about half an hour. That includes putting on something that looks very close to a diaper to collect any urine you might have to get rid of when on the space walk. You have a pair of long johns which have cooling lines inside them to control the body temperature while on the space walk. Then you pull on your pants and get into the upper part of the space suit and plug those together. Then you have to put on your communications cap (which we call a snoopy cap) and then put on your gloves and helmet.

2. Anthony Lavea, Manurewa Central Primary School

How do you control temperatures in a space suit?

That's a good question. I mentioned the long johns with the cooling lines before. The water that's in the plastic tubing is circulated around the suit and we can control the temperature of that water by a dial at the front of the space suit. We have a refrigeration unit on the front of the space suit that we dump water into and that water evaporates into the vacuum of space. When it does that it cools down the plate that that water has been released onto. The water that passes through our cooling system passes over the plate and we can get rid of the excess heat that sometimes builds up inside the suit. If we are getting too cold then we don't pass the water across the plate and it circulates inside our suit only.

3. Holly McGee, Russell School

What is it like to space-walk?

It is very physically demanding to walk inside the spacesuits. The spacesuit is pressurised at 4.3lbs per square inch, so it's like walking inside a fairly stiff balloon and everything that you do is with your hands. Your gloves are also pressurised as they are part of the suit and so it's like squeezing a fairly large rubber ball anytime that you need to do anything. So if you can imagine doing that for 6 or so hours you can imagine how tiring it becomes. There's also a lot of mental effort that goes into it. You have to make sure that you and your tools are safely attached to the space shuttle so you don't float away. Things have to be done efficiently because you only have a limited amount of oxygen and battery power inside your space suit.

4. Kim O'Donnell, St Patricks School

Do you sleep well in space and where do you sleep?

I tend to not sleep very well in space, primarily because I am so excited to be there. I really love flying in space and when the rest of the crew sometimes goes to sleep I will stay up a little bit longer to look out the overhead windows and viewers as it goes by – it's very beautiful. Normally I sleep in the top half of the shuttle, we call it the flight deck – that's where the pilot and the commander and two of the mission specialists sit for launch and landing. I have a thing that kind of looks like a sleeping bag that I tie to the floor and get inside of, and I just float between the floor and the ceiling looking out the overhead windows which are normally pointed at the earth's surface at that point.

5. Jemma Christie, Trentham School

How did you end up being an astronaut and why did you join NASA?

I joined because I wanted to be an astronaut and joining NASA is the only way you can be one. I was in the 4th grade when I decided that I wanted to become an engineer and become involved in our country's space programme and I set that sight for myself and that's what I did. As I got older and was completing my college degrees, that's when it became feasible that I might get to fly in space. So I set that as new goal and I worked very hard at my grades and my work and eventually I was able to apply to become an astronaut. Out of about 10,000 people that applied NASA interviewed 210 people and they picked 35. I was fortunate to be one of the 210 people but I wasn't one of the 35 finally selected. So I had to wait until another time and then out of about 5,000 people they interviewed 120, and I was fortunate enough to be one of the 19 selected that time.

6. Collingwood Intermediate School

What do the planets look like when you are in space?

Unfortunately when you are in a space shuttle you are about 200 miles from the earth so we are not that much closer to the planets than you are right now on the ground. They are somewhat clearer to see because you don't have the atmosphere, such as the clouds or dirty air, between you and the planets.

7. Renee Milner, Manurewa Central Primary School

What do you do when something goes wrong in your spacecraft and you are a long way from Earth?

Well that's what we do a lot of training for, so that we understand the space craft systems very well. The spacecraft are designed to be very reliable and we have multiples in each part of the system so that if one part of the system breaks we still have the capability to continue to operate, or to come home safely. There are certain really bad things that could happen which could cause the crew to be lost as well as the space shuttle, but we can usually fix the problem in orbit, or get home.

8. Kasha Klee, Russell School

Do you think tourists will ever get to travel into space?

I know we could sell a lot of tickets for people if that was possible. I don't think there'll be a time soon when just a tourist could fly into space. I don't think so in the next 15 – 20 years. Someday I think we will probably have airplanes that can fly really high and fast and while they would not go totally into orbit around the earth, they could give you a close enough look at what it's like.

9. Daniel Jones, St Patricks School

When you get back to Earth how do you adjust?

It doesn't take too long. The longest I've been in orbit has been ten days. You feel heavy at first when you get back onto the ground. It feels like someone is sitting on your shoulder when you try to get out of your chair. I'd say within two or three hours the feeling of heaviness has pretty much gone away and within 24 hours you are back to normal.

10. Rachel Konise, Trentham School

What's the longest time you have been in space for?

Ten days. My next flight will be eleven days and the longest I've been on a space walk for is almost 7 hours.

11. Collingwood Intermediate School

How hot is it in space?

It can get very hot, or very cold in space and it depends on where the sun is and whether it is shining directly onto you. We design our spacesuits to tolerate plus or minus 250 degrees fahrenheit. The temperatures canchange very rapidly. Just going between the sun and a shadow could be the difference of 150-200 degrees fahrenheit.

12. Shane Bayliss, Manurewa Central Primary School

How fast on average does a space shuttle travel during re-entry?

The space shuttle, to get into orbit, needs a velocity of about 26,000 feet per second. Many times we call that mark 25, in other words 25 times the speed of sound. It takes that kind of speed to stay in orbit around the earth. However, it only takes about 400 feet per second of slowing yourself down to allow the space shuttle to come back into the earth's atmosphere. We normally, to land in the States, fire our rocket engines somewhere around the Indian Ocean, or Australia. So halfway around the world from where we are going to land is where we would fire our rocket engines to slow us down by 400 feet per second, to bring us home. We then fall towards the earth's atmosphere for about half an hour, and then about half an hour before we land we start to enter the earth's atmosphere. At that point we are travelling still at 25,600 feet per second approximately. So we say that we are travelling at 25 times the speed of sound when we hit the earth's atmosphere. We then continue to enter the earth's atmosphere and in the process of doing so the temperatures on the outside of the space shuttle reach around 2000 degrees so that makes the molecules in the air get really excited. They glow beautiful colours of yellow and pink and orange. It's a tremendous light show, especially at night. The space shuttle continues to slow down due to the friction of the molecules in the atmosphere to the point that when we come in we're coming down at 300 miles per hour with respect to the runway and we land at about 200 miles per hour.

13. Rowena Smith, Russell School

Do you as an astronaut believe in UFOs?

I don't believe in them and I don't know if any other astronauts believe in them. At the same time we have no evidence that they do not exist. I think we are as interested as anyone else in the sightings that people have reported. I have not seen, and no-one has shown me, any hard evidence to show that beyond a doubt there are intelligent beings flying UFO's.

14. Stuart Hinkley, St Patricks School

What are the main benefits of space exploration?

There are many of them and it's hard to pick out one or two. One of them is the tremendous improvement in lifestyles and in the way people are cared for. Many of the advances we have in medicine are a direct result of what has been done to develop capabilities for the space programme. Things such as MRI's, Cat Scans and the ability of a doctor to read your heart rhythms through relays or satellites or other means. We continue to do a lot of research into proteins and hormones and enzymes that are in the human body and many of these that we are studying now will produce new medicines which will help to solve many of the common ailments that people have here on earth.

15. Kyle Richardson, Trentham School

How long do you have to train for to go into space?

My whole life I've been training to fly in space. You have to do a lot of training to get the right credentials and work experience to become eligible to fly, to become an astronaut. Once selected you go through a one year long series of training which teaches you a lot about medical sciences, airplanes, the space shuttle and all it's systems, the universe and space physics. Everything you think of that we do, or are exposed to, in flying in a space shuttle and conducting experiments. After that first year you become assigned to a crew and ultimately to fly in space. Then it takes you about a year to train for a given mission before you go flying.

16. Collingwood Intermediate School

What is your biggest fear in space?

The fear of doing something incorrectly, such as ruining an experiment or causing somebody to get hurt. That's why we train so hard so we fully understand the experiments and equipment - to make sure that the opportunity to gain some valuable science is not lost.

17. Jonathan Prasad, Manurewa Central Primary School

Do you have to be in the airforce to be able to go to space? If not, what qualifications do you need?

You do not have to be in the airforce. In fact we're going through another selection process right now. The way that is done is people apply to be commanders and pilots of the space shuttle, or to be the mission specialists, such as myself. The commanders and pilots have to have military or jet experience, and have to have been through a military test pilot school and done test piloting. So they have been or still are in the military. And that includes not only the airforce, but also the navy, the marine corps. Other military services we have such as the coastguard and the army do not have high performance jet aircraft so if they would apply they would have to apply as mission specialists, as opposed to pilots. Mission specialists come from a very broad background. Some of us like myself have military experience in flight-testing but we also hire military people who have very high levels of education either as doctors or in different areas of engineering or science. Most of the mission specialists are civilians who do not have military rank, but are highly educated as doctors, or vets or scientists.

18. Oliver Harder, Russell School

How do you keep the spaceship hygienic?

It's not as easy as you might think! Your food can float off from your tray and get onto the walls. If you're not careful when you go to the bathroom things can float away from you – it's not so funny in space! Each person is responsible on various days to clean up the space shuttle, so that no-one can get sick.

19. Jennifer McDermott, St Patricks School

Have you taken any animals up into space?

I have had animals on at least one of my flights. We've had some frogs and fish. On flights other than mine we've had mice and rats, and even some monkeys have flown on some flights.

20. Michelle Borowicz, Trentham School

What do you do in your spare time in space?

Unfortunately there isn't a lot of spare time because the time in orbit is very valuable for us to do as many experiments and investigations as we can. But whenever there is a bit of a break I will float up to one of the windows and look out to try and see earth. The world is tremendously beautiful and it's a very precious planet that we live on. The atmosphere is a very thin blue band around earth and I see that God made a very beautiful planet for us to live on and we need to protect it and make sure that we have a very healthy planet to live on.