>> Welcome back to Building 9, the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility here at Johnson Space Center
where we've got some asteroid simulations going on.
We're back now talking this time with James Johnson,
who is the test director for this simulation.
Thanks for talking with us, James.
>> Thanks.
It's my pleasure, good morning.
>> So when we finished talking with Mike Gernhardt earlier,
we were just getting starting with some ARGOS work.
Can you kind of tell us a little bit about what's going on behind us, here.
>> Sure, excellent.
ARGOS stands for Active Response Gravity Offload System,
and it's just one of several different facilities that we're using here
at Johnson Space Center to go ahead and evaluate doing near-earth asteroid simulated EVAs.
So part of overall Desert RATS test is to really kind of do two things right now,
and that's first of all evaluating this new second generation space exploration vehicle,
in addition to evaluating some of the different facilities that we have here at JSC,
and how we might use those for fuller fidelity tests coming up in August.
>> Okay. And so we're going to take a look at the space exploration vehicle later in the hour,
but right now we talked earlier about how we want
to get the geologist perspective and the astronaut perspective.
So we've got Jose Hurtado, a geologist with the University of Texas
at El Paso, banging on some rocks, I guess.
What is that going to teach us?
>> Exactly, exactly.
Well, what we're trying to do here in evaluating the facility is get a couple
of different perspectives.
And as I believe you heard Mike mention earlier, it's good to have an astronaut perspective,
as well as a geologist perspective, because they have two different views as to how
to actually conduct a hands-on exploration.
When you go to an asteroid or any type of near-earth object,
the main driver is going to be science, of course.
So we want to have that perspective.
And what Jose is doing over here is practicing just simple sample collection.
Most geologists will take a rock chip sample to be able to get a piece of a full story
as to what the local geology is telling them about the formation of that location.
Obviously, those techniques become a lot more complicated when you're
in a micro-gravity environment, which we're kind of trying
to simulate here using the ARGOS facility.
>> So you can't just get out on the surface of an asteroid and start picking up rocks?
>> No, no, this is not quite that easy.
And we're still learning about exactly how we're going to do that.
We're learning about the asteroids and then here we're learning about some techniques.
So there's going to be some iteration.
As we learn more about the asteroids, we're going to have to go back here and kind of back
to the drawing board a little bit and tweak the concepts that we're testing out here.
>> Okay. And this is all part of what we normally call the Desert RATS test,
Research and Technology Studies, and desert because it's normally out in the desert,
but this year we're going to be doing it here in Houston, right?
>> Exactly.
Yeah. It actually started back in 1997 with just a small team of about four individuals heading
out to the desert, mostly around Flagstaff, Arizona.
And as they went out there, they were evaluating suit concepts.
Well, that's grown from just spacesuit concepts to really taking a look at how you're going
to conduct missions, you know, on the moon, on Mars, or on asteroids.
Right now we're in a year where we're kind of building up new generation vehicles,
and so we're developing some new technologies and new concepts.
So it didn't quite make sense to take everybody back out to the desert this year.
So instead, we stayed a little more in-house and took advantage of more of the tools
and facilities and personnel that we had here in-house to kind of refine some
of our concepts before hopefully return to the field in the future.
>> And so this month's test, we're actually to get ready
for some bigger tests that'll be taking place this summer?
>> Um, exactly.
We plan on doing the bigger tests here at JSC, as well, just,
as I mentioned earlier, kind of increasing the fidelity.
We hope to have an operational team over in the Mission Control Center, actually,
in one of the small rooms that's available to us.
And we will try to really simulate time delays and that full interaction between the crew
and the Mission Control Center in that full-scale simulation.
>> Okay. And so, what exactly is your part in all this as a test director?
>> Well, it's really a job of trying to bring all of the pieces together
so we can exercise these tests or these evaluations and simulations.
So it's a lot of the coordination up front, as well as also the realtime operations,
making sure everything is running smoothly, we try to have things going as clockwork.
And also dealing with the unexpected, too.
You know, sometimes, especially as we're learning here on-site, we're faced with,
you know, very unexpected events in having to coordinate with other tests going on near by.
>> Uh-huh.
>> Now that is one benefit of when we're out in the field, you know, the rattlesnakes
and the rabbits don't seem to mind as much with our testing.
So here we have to make sure we're good neighbors in good [inaudible]
with everybody else who's trying to do their testing.
My job is to try and really coordinate that.
Make sure everything runs smoothly, and to get the data collected that we need to collect.
>> Okay, well thank you so much for talking with us.
We really appreciate it.
>> Well, thank you.
>> And like I said, we'll be back a little bit later in the hour to take another look
at the space exploration vehicles, part of the tests that are going on.
So back to Kiley [phonetic].
Talk to you real soon.
Thanks.