although it's got manly here if you're a
fan of space like me you probably spent
a lot of time watching Mission Control
during some missions you may even try to
have glean some data from those screens
or you might wonder what the heck do all
those screams mean so I actually want to
go into what's on some of those big
screens or at least the interesting ones
you can see during Mission Control this
is the NASA ISS Mission Control you've
got the big map screen in the middle and
some screens off to the side this is the
Russian equivalent and you'll see they
also have a map these maps are very
common and there's a lot of features
that are shown on these maps to the
casual observer this just looks like a
map of the earth with a bunch of
squiggly lines all over but the squiggly
lines provide at-a-glance information to
the mission controllers so what are all
the lines what are they all meeting
first up all the important vehicles are
shown on orbit you can probably see the
ferry there the space station is also
sitting underneath it that's their
current location these lines show the
next few orbits where it's come from and
then where it's going to be over the
coming number of orbits now these lines
form waves as the spacecraft is expected
to move between its northernmost and
southernmost latitude during each orbit
but also during each orbit which is
about 90 minutes the Earth rotates by
about 22 and a half degrees so each
crossing of the Equator is about 22
degrees further west due to the rotation
of the earth as a spacecraft move around
the Earth they also move in and out of
sunlight and that's important for
spacecraft which are powered by solar
power so they mark the location of the
Sun and you can also see where they mark
the location of daylight but furthermore
if you look they've also marked the
location of every place where it crosses
from night into day or day into night
it's also important to realize that
because the space station is over 200
miles high
even though thought may be over the dark
side of the earth it might still be
getting illuminated by the Sun
frequently the display will include an
exact countdown to the next event in
this case a countdown to sunset there's
also a bunch of other numbers there that
are pretty self-explanatory latitude
longitude altitude inclinations pretty
obvious a few new orbital mechanics beta
is one that you might not recognize the
beta angle is the angle of the plane of
the orbit of the International Space
Station to the Sun with the space
station having an inclination of about
52 degrees to the Earth's axis and the
Earth's axis having an angle of a bit 23
degrees to the Sun those can sometimes
add up and give you a beta angle this as
high as 75 degrees and in that situation
the space station doesn't have a
day/night cycle it remains continuously
in sunlight which has big issues for a
thermal control when the Space Shuttle
was still flying it was not allowed to
go to the space station during these
conditions because it would overheat I
found this image online showing the next
day night transition as being a hundred
and four hours away and you'll see that
it actually breaks the formatting of the
text box and you'll notice that there's
none of these little ticks showing the
day/night transitions in this particular
condition this version also gives you a
clearer look at where this space station
is and you'll see that there's actually
a circle around the space station that
is the horizon distance that's how far
people on the space station can look out
to ground targets because this is mapped
onto sphere it gets stretched out into
this sort of beam shape when it is far
north and south but that is essentially
a circular distance similarly if you
look up over Russia you will see a
number of yellow circles with letters in
them these are all ground stations that
are providing service to the Russian
section of the space station when it's
in line of sight to these the u.s. of
course uses the tigress Network there's
three satellites marked on the map in
this case and they are color-coded you
notice one is green one is yellow and
one is blue
these are satellites in geosynchronous
orbit
not necessarily geostationary they're
allowed to wander above and below the
equator but on the map you'll see that
there are also green yellow and blue
areas marked off and these aren't the
areas of coverage these are the areas of
no coverage and these areas of no
coverage are actually smaller than the
areas of coverage and this might seem
confusing if you think about a satellite
how could it see more than half of the
planet well this is again the projection
of where the space station would be so
the space station could be above a
latitude and longitude which is out of
sight of the space day of the satellite
but because the space station is 200
miles up it's able to look over the
horizon and see the satellite so that's
why these areas are marked that way now
if I take this image and zoom out a
little we can actually see that to the
top right there are some timers here and
you'll see loss of signal L OS and AOS
these both correspond to TDRs satellites
so these are the times when they're
expected to lose the signal from one
satellite and gain the signal on the
other satellite you also see things like
crew sleep you might be managing the
most complex machine ever built but you
also have to manage the crew and the
crew have certain schedules that they
are required to keep and so you have to
incorporate the crew sleep schedule into
all your planning and if I move to the
right you'll also see this display which
is quite common because it basically
shows all the events all the cautions
the warnings the alarms and allows
everybody to keep track of it here it's
looking fine right now but one thing
that might cause a problem cause an
alarm is your the high radiation area
that is marked on the map the SAA
there's something awful area no II know
the South Atlantic anomaly that is the
part of the Earth's magnetosphere where
the Van Allen belts come down very close
to the surface of the earth so when the
space station flies through this area
it's getting an extra high dose of
radiation and it's been known that the
laptops
sometimes crash they will get bit errors
sometimes astronauts they will actually
see little flashes of light from the
radiation
so that's marked on the map because it
causes problems often enough that you
want to know when you're flying through
it so yeah that's a quick overview of
what you might see on the big screens of
course that's the stuff that everybody
gets to see the really interesting stuff
is happening down on these small screens
and you'll never be able to read this on
any livestream but that's where the real
information is happening that's where
the smart people are doing the work
analyzing the information and making the
decisions
I'm Scott Manley fly safe
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