Kind: captions
Language: en
you're watching a Nova science Now video
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podcast my condition okay does the
capsule look like it's okay over capsule
looks good from here
over home to Earth comes the Voyager
tears of thrilled lines of proud
Americans in ceremonies at Mercury
control center President John F Kennedy
presents the a distinguished service
medal to Astronaut John
Glenn all of the glory and glamour aside
what is it really like being an
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astronaut it is pretty physically and
mentally training this is quite an
experience that year going through for
the past year and a half Mike mamino has
been training for the upcoming hub
repair Mission as a lead space walker
and mamino can tell you that being an
astronaut isn't all zero gravity and
freeze-dried ice cream the physical part
of it is you're in the space suit and
you're in the suit for about 8 hours
from the time they put you in the time
you get out you good there's no food
near with you so you have to have a good
breakfast you do have a drink bag so you
can drink water while you're doing this
but you really need to be in the best
shape you can be
in it's also mentally fatig faing
because you have to think about what
you're doing if you're doing oops you
get in trouble you got to really
concentrate on what's going on you can't
think about what you're going to what
you're going to have for dinner that
night although you might like to but you
really need to think about what you're
doing it kind of gets to you in those
last couple hours you could get fatigued
and start making the mistake you really
wouldn't want to
make mamino and his team will be doing
everything from replacing batteries and
insulation to intricate repair work on
one of Hubble's main
cameras every space mission is dangerous
and even if the astronauts remain safe
one small mistake could compromise the
world's most famous
telescope so training is
Paramount preparing astronauts here on
Earth for a mission in space is a
challenge in itself NASA relies heavily
on the neutral buoyancy lab the neutral
buoyancy lab is a fancy name for a big
giant pool we can fit a whole space
shuttle in here plus a whole Space stage
it's huge
they try to get us neutrally buoyant and
that enables us to practice our space
walking we can egress the space shuttle
and move along the hand rails and work
with the telescope and it's very close
to learning the uh the body positioning
and the skills you need to Space
Walk an astronaut is only part of the
picture behind every NASA Mission there
is a vast team of experts who play a
huge role in the preparation of the
flight team
with their coaches their teachers their
flight controllers and their friends we
write all of the procedures for the
spacewalk which crewman's going to do
what who's better in this area versus
that who's going to be on the arm and we
make that into one continuous procedure
that we just update constantly and the
choreography is just down to the dime so
that we don't waste any
time each Eva or extra vehicular
activity that an astronaut is scheduled
to perform in space is painstakingly
practiced here on Earth dozens of times
over a course of years all in an effort
to work out the
Kinks well I see there's a list of
things you can screw up and what you
want to do is screw up get check off as
many of that list as you can on the
ground so when you get to space there's
only a couple of them
left no training here on Earth however
can entirely prepare someone for an
experience that is quite literally out
of this
world you just have to lift your head or
your eyeballs and look around you and
it's the most beautiful site you've ever
seen so you're in some ways you're
totally prepared to do your work but the
the experience of being out there is
just so unique uh and it's it's
wonderful it's the best thing in the
world to learn more about mik mamino in
the upcoming Hubble repair Mission watch
Nova science now airing Wednesday July
9th on PBS or for more funs science
stories visit us online at
pbs.org
NOA scienc now