Increment 68 Multilateral Technical Integration Meeting

 

I spent the week at DLR at the Trilateral Technical Integration Meeting  for Increment 68. While I was there, I took this little video of the Columbus Control Centre. 

Working on an Astronaut Mission Report, monthly meetings, and extra crewtime

 The Proxima mission report is finished. I finished it in April. But it isn't released yet. I'm still trying to integrate the reviewer comments. And I need to get data protection notices to the scientists (and Thomas). This has taken a lot of time within ESA - because the process wasn't very well-defined. But as of this week, the oneness is on me. Unfortunately, I have a ton of other work, so it's difficult to get this out the door. 

Today I'm attending the Payload Analysis and Integration (PAI) meeting. This is a once-monthy event where the Payload Integration Managers (PIMs) present the status of the payloads they're supporting. By "Payloads" I mean the individual experiements or demonstration that are performed on the International Space Station. The PIMs are the unsung heros of the ISS. They do all the dirty work to make sure everything's on track, that everybody has what they need, that the payloads pass all the checks. When things go well and the payloads fly without a hitch, nobody notices anything or thinks to thank them. The only time people notice the PIMs is when something has gone wrong - and then the PIMs get the blame (although it's rarely their fault). 

I'm not managing a particular payload. Instead, I'm looking at the whole research complement for Increment 68 (starting on 30 September). Today, during the PAI, I sit with the flight plan, my assessments sheets, and resources table, and I listen. This is the time to get the "ground-truth" of what's happening with the payloads. We can spot problems, and adjust our expectations for the increment. 

The most recent major change was the slip of the upload vehicle, NG-18. This was scheduled to come up in Increment 67 (the current increment) but it's moved to the right and now it falls in my increment. This means that all the hardware on that flight will now move into my purview. So we have to account for the upload - and all the crewmember activities in Increment 68. This isn't too much of a problem for us at the moment, since we have enough crewtime in the increment to get all the activities done. This is because the Space-X crewed vehicles have seats for 4 astronauts - and this gives us a whole other person on board the station for our increments. When we were using the Soyuz vehicles for crewmember upload, we would only have 6 crewmembers (max) at a time. And of these we could only use the crewtime of the USOS crew. 

Our program hasn't quite caught up with the additional crewtime, however. It's not like we can just ramp up science. These programs take years and years to develop. But it's frustrating to realize that we have all this crewtime we can spend and nothing to spend it on. After years of scrimping and saving, our pockets are bursting, but the stores are all closed. 

Last summer, during Pesquet's Alpha mission, we had all this excess crewtime floating around. And I imagine this was so frustrating for Thomas. He is a complete workhorse. This is a guy who will do voluntary science in all his spare time. He wants to be of value. And we didn't have any extra science to give him. 

ESA's come up with the solution of having "off the shelf" science proposed - so we can use the brains of scientists and the equipment we currently have on the ISS for "just in case" crewtime. They put out an announcement of opportunity - and you can find it here. Of course, it doesn't solve the immediate crisis, but it's a step in the right direction. 

Looking back at an Astronaut's Mission

 

When ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet returned from his Alpha mission, we were happy.  He'd done so much work for us - and our only regret was that, due to scheduling issues with the commercial/soyuz planning, we couldn't use him more. 

During his debrief in January, he asked us, "what are the results from my mission?" 

The Incrment Manager said, "It's too soon for us to know. You just came back." 

"What about my Proxima mission...in 2017?" said Thomas. 

I remembered Thomas' Proxima mission. I’d just come on board at ESA and was part of the team monitoring science and tracking Utilisation crew-time. At the time, I was so struck by his dedication to the mission, by his “can-do” attitude, and how he always gave us more than we asked for, more than we could afford with our limited budget. After many more years of watching operations, I’ve seen many dedicated crew members, but he stands out. 

The Proxima Mission of ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet began with the launch of the 49 Soyuz (49S) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on 17 November 2016 (GMT322) at 20:20 GMT. Following a nominal 34-orbit rendezvous, the 49S docked with the Rassvet module on the International Space Station on 19 November 2016 (GMT 324).  Along with ESA Crewmember Pesquet were Russian crewmember Oleg Novitsky and US crewmember Peggy Whitson. The Proximia mission concluded on 02-June 2017 (GMT153) after Pesquet spent 196 days in low earth orbit. 

There were forty ESA objectives associated with the Proxima mission – many of which were performed directly by Thomas Pesquet. These included human research payloads as well as various investigations in biology and biotechnology, earth and space sciences, educational activities, physical and materials sciences, technology development, and facility maintenance activities. 

I started pulling the thread on Thomas' request and discovered that there really wasn’t a way to easily give him what he asked for. We have agency resources to plan and execute missions – but this is our focus, and we don’t have a ready way to look behind us and systematically collect the remarkable things that came out of our work. Nobody has the “spare” time to manage this kind of project. However, I thought I could at least assemble existing reports and put them together for him. But even these reports were scant. I reached out to ESA’s science team – and they agreed to work with me, to let me bother the scientists, and to try and find answers. As the scientists started to respond, their answers brimmed with enthusiasm and results, and with gratitude for the efforts that had gone into achieving them. A picture began to emerge: a view of the tremendous impact his work has had. 

The report is finished now.... at 70,000 words. Quite a feat. It's gone through the review process and I'm trying to get the reviewer comments incorporated into the final document. I'm trying to get it approved for public release - and I plan to write a review article to present at the International Astronautical Congress in September. I am so excited to share. 

Gripping and Grasping objects in Space

ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet is aboard the ISS - and he's well on his way to executing some of the important ESA experiments. Today, as I write this, Thomas is completing his first on-board session of the GRASP payload. We have a time-limit on when he can perform this session in order for the science to be valid - GRASP Session #1 must be performed between flight-day 7 and Flight day 15.  

We always couple the sessions of the GRASP experiment with the GRIP experiment - since they share some of the same hardware. Thomas performed the first session of GRIP last week. 

So, what are GRIP and GRASP about? Well, quite simply, they are neurological experiments designed to understand how the brain interprets and processes signals to form the sense of our body - our proprioception. 

Proprioception is the continuous feedback loop between sensory receptors in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) throughout the body and the central nervous system (CNS). This important bodily neuromuscular sense allows us to instantly integrate our sense of joint and body position, our awareness of motion (kinaesthesia), our sense of force, and our sense of change of velocity. Normal proprioception allows us to move freely without giving these movements a second thought. The human brain rapidly gains the capability for proprioception in the first years of life. Abnormal proprioception can be debilitating - causing symptoms that can interfere with even the simplest activities. 

A number of medical conditions can impair proprioception. This includes the 10 Million people suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, 2.8 Million people suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, the 230,000 people suffering from ALS, and the 208,000 people suffering from Huntingon’s disease. Other medical conditions affecting proprioception include those with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The World Health Organization estimates that TBI is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide – with an estimated 69 Million TBIs each year. Autism, diabetes, stroke, arthritis, and herniated disk can also affect proprioception. 

The GRIP and GRASP experiments help us to better understand how the brain detects and integrates signals from the PNS. The microgravity environment of the ISS provides a unique opportunity for this study. With the gravitational force absent, researchers gain insight into the integration of other PNS signals into the CNS. In other words, they’re researching how the brain learns new processes and how the brain and body can adapt to control movement in a new environment. Importantly, by studying how a healthy brain adapts to the loss of an important PNS signal, scientists can better understand and treat diseases that impair proprioception. 

The GRIP experiment studies how the brain uses PNS signals to calculate, anticipate, and apply the correct amount of force needed to lift or lower an object. This experiment uses an instrument called a manipulandum, a sophisticated technology that measures pressure, acceleration, rotation, torque, and moisture. The astronaut’s motions with the manipulandum are also tracked by special cameras. (interesting note: this same manipulandum technology is used in the field of rehabilitation robotics for persons with cognitive impairment or physical disabilities).

 The GRASP experiment studies how the brain encodes spatial information for eye-hand coordination. How do we orient ourselves and know where to “reach” when grasping for an object? Gravity plays a special role in this type of orientation and coordination since it gives us directional information through our vestibular system – and helps us coordinate the information coming in from other sensory channels (e.g. muscle receptors, visual receptors, cutaneous receptors and joint receptors). In microgravity, the vestibular receptors from the inner ear (otolithic cues) are repressed.  Only in this environment can we learn how the brain uses specific reference frames to encode the position and orientation of objects that we want to manipulate. 

Results to date for these experiment already look very interesting as they already show effects in microgravity conditions, as well as the capability of Astronauts to adapt to the microgravity environment. The data are novel and provide important inputs to inform and update current neuroscientific models of multi-sensory integration. 

Monitoring Real-Time Ops

I work on a three-person team called the "Requirements Planning Team", or RP-Team. One of our jobs is to support Real Time Operations. We track on all of the ESA research objectives for a particular increment - and advocate for these objectives within mulitlateral science meetings with NASA, JAXA, and CSA. We also monitor how much crewtime we spend for ESA activities, and regularly sync up with NASA crewtime engineers. The real-time part of the job can be challenging. There are regular meetings and products and deadlines that need to be met. Also, there are regular difficulties that arise with anomalous situations - so you have to be prepared to accept phone calls and conduct assessments and give advice during nights and on weekends sometimes.

Because this part of the job can be so intense, the three of us on the RP-Team take turns. We work by increments. 12 months out from the start of an increment, we start working with the ESA Utilisation Planning Team Leader, Kirsten MacDonell. We help define the increment and work through any scenarios and issues that arise. Then we follow the real-time ops when the increment starts - and follow it through to completion and post-increment reporting. This means that we cover Real-time for six months at a time - and get a 1-year break from this intensity in between. Or, at least, that's how it's supposed to work.

We're a couple of months out from the end of Increment 63. Increment 63 ends when the 62 Soyuz undocks and returns to earth on 21 October (according to the current flight plan). Unfortunately for us, Simone, the RP-Team Lead fof Increment 63, has just accepted another job offer. This is great for Simone - but not awesome for Chloé and me, since we'll have to cover the Real-time operations in addition to our regular tasking. On Monday I'll start up for Simone. So I'm madly trying to wrap up everything that needs to get done with my regular work because I won't have so much time for it, starting on Monday.