What are kids asking about space?
Kids ask the best questions. That’s why we’re turning the mic over to young space enthusiasts wanting to ask an astronaut their burning questions about space exploration.
Veteran NASA astronaut Winston Scott joined our show and answered these burning questions.
Our eager space enthusiasts asked Scott some basic questions like what he eats in space, if it is fun to float, and if Scott gets nauseous as he launches into space. We learned that although its freeze dried, Scott said the food on the ISS is delicious.
“My favorite would be scrambled eggs and sausage patties,” Scott said. “That's what I eat most. I also had corn flakes, but the scrambled eggs and sausage package were my favorite for breakfast.”
In addition to food in space, one curious kid asked Scott the question we all are wanting the answer to: Aare we alone in the universes? Scott said although he has not seen any life beyond our home planet, he has hope that researchers will identify life in our universe someday.
“Let's put it this way, I believe that there in the billions and billions and billions and billions of planets in existence, there must be a planet, some place out there, that has life on it,” Scott said. “Now we have not encountered that life yet, and we may not encounter it in my lifetime, or perhaps in your lifetime. But one of these days, I believe humans from Earth will meet beings from other planets. Simply because of the odds are that favor.”
If you've got a question for an astronaut, email us your voice memo at arewethereyet@cfpublic.org Please be sure to include your first name and age.
A fire in orbit – for science!
Wildfires cause a lot of destruction on Earth that includes property damage, air quality issues, and more.
Researchers are trying to understand more about wildfire behavior and how the flames spread and one researcher is doing it hundreds of miles above Earth.
One such experiment was on board the Northrop Grumman’s NG-21 resupply mission to the International Space Station that launched this week from Cape Canaveral.
The goal is to better understand how wildfires happen on Earth and how they can be controlled.
James Urban, an assistant professor in the department of fire protection engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute is now watching astronauts study and conduct his flame research on the ISS.
He said he is trying to recreate similar wildfire behavior in microgravity.
“What we're trying to do in this experiment is to go into microgravity, where we don't have buoyancy,” Urban said. “The flame is going to be much more responsive to the flow that we impose onto it. So, by imposing a non-steady wind flow that's going to blow over the burning sample, we're going to be able to control the flame with that behavior, and that's going to have a strong impact on how it spreads.”
While Urban has his feet firmly planted on Earth, he said he is still very involved in the experiment while it’s in space. There will be a crew on Earth controlling the majority of the experiment.
“I think there's some things that the astronauts will be controlling, but I think a lot of it will be from the ground,” Urban said. “So, in some ways, it'll be almost like I'm up there, but just peering through a computer screen.”
Urban is hopeful that as he and other researchers continue to study wildfires, there can be answers to how to make wildfires less severe and damaging to our planet.
“I’m burning plastic in space to understand wildfires, but we're also burning much larger fuel beds of vegetation to understand how wildfires spread at a much larger scale,” Urban said. “This isn't the only thing we can do to understand how wildfires spread, but it's part of the bigger puzzle of trying to understand all of the complex and detailed physics that are present in this very dangerous and this very destructive phenomenon.”
