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This is Vin Urbanowski from AITE
in Stanford Connecticut and this is NASA Now.
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Hi I'm Matt and this is NASA Now.
NASA is focusing its energy on deep space exploration.
So it's no surprise that some of NASA's greatest scientific minds
and experts are hard at work developing incredible new ways
to support and sustain missions lasting longer than six months.
Sound amazing?
Wait till you see what's on the drawing board.
That's ahead, first here's what's happening at NASA Now.
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A host of NASA Satellites played a key role in helping scientists
and weather forecasters plot and plan
for the largest superstorm in modern history.
Images captured by NASA's Terra satellite
on October 26th revealed hurricane Sandy's enormous size.
NASA's CloudSat and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission
satellites captured detailed data;
revealing that precipitation was falling
through the storm at 2 inches per hour.
As a result, flood watches were issued
for the U.S. East coast and interior areas.
NASA's Aqua spacecraft and Atmospheric Infrared Sounder,
or AIRS, captured infrared imagery
of the hurricane revealing strong thunderstorms;
shown in purple.
This allowed scientists
to predict the hurricane's areas of heaviest rainfall.
AIRS also indicated the extent of the storms' reach,
shown in blue, stretching from the Carolinas
to the Ohio Valley and Eastern Canada.
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Right now the only human beings living in space are
on board the International Space Station.
NASA's next goal is to put human beings on spacecraft
that will take them deep into our solar system.
Today we are joined by NASA Astronaut
and Mission Specialist Alvin Drew
from the Johnson Space Center.
Colonel Drew has been working on the next phase of spacecraft
and equipment that will support future human exploration
of deep space for long durations of time.
My name is Alvin Drew.
I'm an astronaut and mission specialist
at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Right now I work on a project called a deep space
habitat project.
Part of a bigger program called the Advanced Exploration
Systems program.
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The deep space habitat is basically a space ship.
We're looking at how to design parts of a space ship
where people live and work for very long voyages.
We're going to go beyond the moon, into deeper space,
we may be living out there for six months,
a year, a year and a half.
So, how's the best way to make that so you can work
and be productive and enjoy the experience.
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Design always begins with the fundamental question is
"What do you want?"
and "What do you want it to do?"
If I build you the best race car in the world
and you really wanted a sedan to carry around your kids,
then I've missed the mark.
And so first thing we do is make sure we're headed off
in the right direction, because there's going to be quite a bit
of effort and energy and money spent on building this.
At the heart of engineering is constraints.
If your budget was unlimited and your materials unlimited,
of course you'd build great, palatial things.
We have lots of constraints on us.
We have schedules.
I can't take until the year 2050 to deliver this.
I need to have something out by the end
of this particular decade.
The next thing is, we have different types of rockets
that can take you to orbit, but they can only carry
up so much weight and things that are so big.
And so if I bring something in that weighs 100 tons,
well nothing will get it off the earth, so it will sit there.
So I need to bring up things that are light enough to go
up on these particular rockets.
Also, they can't be very wide.
Most houses they're 30 feet wide, you know, in spots.
I don't have any rockets that are 30 feet wide
and they'd never make it out of the atmosphere if they did.
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Recyclable materials is a big point with us.
Long before we had things like green engineering
and green this here on earth is a big fad.
Spacecraft and space stations were doing this
as a matter of necessity.
Everything we bring into space with us has to be imported.
If you're on a one and a half year journey to Mars,
nothing's is going to come out and resupply you
for that year and a half.
So you need to pack everything with you that you can.
All of our air, all of our water, all of our food,
all of our clothing, every single thing,
we are utterly dependent on what comes up
and these things sometimes cost between $10,000
and $50,000 a pound to bring to orbit.
So obviously, everything that we can reuse saves us lots of time
and lots of effort on getting things up to space.
Up until recent history, I would say what you could do
with leftover materials is pretty limited.
You could be very imaginative,
you might take the thermal blanket off
of an old lunar lander and you could use
that to insulate something like that.
Or you could take the metal and make a table or something.
As a friend of mine once said, "If you're going to live
on the moon, because of radiation, you don't live
on the moon, you live in the moon.
That's what protects you from your radiation."
So you might take the rocks around you and build up berms
or dig a hole and then put your vehicle down inside the surface
of the moon to protect you from the heat, the boiling heat
of the day and the deep space radiation.
So it's wherever your imagination leads you.
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One of the big things we're working on right now,
we're excited about, is this new thing called "3-D printing."
I don't know if you've seen these before,
but you can take plastic and you can print things out of it.
You can make things that are 3 dimensional.
So we have lots of plastic packing
for our food, for everything else.
Well what do we do with that trash?
Can we now grind this up, melt it down and turn it back
into the plastic wire that feeds the 3-D printer such that
if I need a new chair or a new set of eye glass frames,
can I print those out on my printer and reuse my trash?
Can I turn it back into something good?
So, yes, recycling is a big part of how we're going to work
and survive in, on long space journeys.
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An important part of any mission is the use
and reuse of materials.
Remember, as Colonel Drew shared, every pound of equipment
and supplies you take
up to space requires lots of money and fuel.
With that in mind, your assignment is
to design a future mission.
Teachers you and your students will get a real taste
of designing a mission for the moon.
Look for Pack Up for the Moon Educator Guide.
You'll find it on the NASA Explorer Schools'
Virtual Campus.
Well that's it for NASA NOW.
Be sure to visit our facebook page and tell us
about your moon mission.
We'll see you next time on NASA NOW!
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NASA NOW comes to you from the Virtual Campus
at NASA Explorer schools.