They were 250 miles above Earth, removed International Space Station (ISS) commander Peggy Whitson, when dual of her crewmates sounded a alarm. Out on a spacewalk to implement new solar arrays, a span detected a two-and-a-half-foot slice in a station’s new photovoltaic sheeting. Knowing a slice could simply enhance and destroy a pivotal energy source, Whitson proceeded to get creative.
“We didn’t have a Home Depot we could go to,” a NASA wanderer quipped, recalling a 2007 occurrence Feb 22 during this year’s initial Extreme Engineering talk.
Scrounging for materials and consulting with goal control, Whitson and colleagues fashioned contraptions they called “cufflinks” out of gangling handle and tape. Ultimately, one wanderer embarked on a adventurous and rare mission, needlework a sheeting behind together over 7 perfected hours while swinging from a 50-foot bang connected to a robotic arm. Over a decade later, a array is still in operation.
It was only another day on a pursuit for Whitson—a ancestral 665 of that she has spent in space, some-more than any other American wanderer or lady of any nationality, over a march of 3 long-duration space flights given 2002. She is a initial lady to authority a ISS, doing so on dual apart expeditions, and a initial lady to perform 10 spacewalks, totaling some-more than 60 hours. Last September, she returned to Earth after spending a record-breaking 289 uninterrupted days in space, a many in NASA history. She still misses a view.
“You never get sleepy of looking during a planet,” pronounced Whitson, who is featured on a cover of a latest National Geographic. “It’s grand each time.”
Whitson, who belonged to a same wanderer category as Professor Mike Massimino, began her career during NASA in space medicine and biology, that valid ideal knowledge for a far-reaching operation of systematic investigate she has conducted and overseen while in orbit. In microgravity, she explained, each wall of a station’s interior can be a lab, while a extraneous is also lonesome in active experiments.
But enlarged durations vital in microgravity has surpassing effects on a tellurian physique as well. The callouses on a bottom of feet start to disappear, she described, transposed by new ones on tip of a feet where astronauts obstacle anchors to assistance stay in place, and prophesy eventually starts to mellow or distort. Returning to Earth is always a bold shock.
“Gravity sucks,” she said.
Whitson was introduced by her NASA classmate Mike Massimino, Professor of Professional Practice in Mechanical Engineering and a maestro of dual space convey flights to a Hubble Space Telescope, and presented a commemorative t-shirt by members of a Columbia Space Initiative. The following day, she assimilated Dean Mary C. Boyce and members of Columbia’s Society of Women Engineers for a special lunch.
—by Jesse Adams
