NASA astronaut Don Pettit is about to embark on his fourth area mission — one certain to be crammed with probabilities to tinker with issues in orbit.
Pettit, together with Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, will trip on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch atop a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday (Sept. 11) at 12:23 p.m. EDT (1623 GMT; 9:23 p.m. native Baikonur time).
The 69-year-old Pettit will spend six months in area on the approaching mission, including to his 370-day orbital tally. He informed House.com he misses the ultimate frontier when he isn’t up there: “Some individuals are born to be cowboys and trip a horse. I am born to trip a rocket and be in area. So I actually wanting ahead to going again.”
Pettit likes to MacGyver issues in area. Maybe his best-known invention is the Capillary Beverage, or House Cup, which “makes use of floor stress, wetting, and container form to imitate the function of gravity in ingesting on Earth,” in line with NASA. As a substitute of sipping from a straw as astronauts sometimes must do, the gadget permits crews to drink from a barely modified vessel.
Associated: Weightlessness and its impact on astronauts
The astronaut additionally is aware of easy methods to repurpose on a regular basis supplies, akin to knitting needles. Pettit used paper to rub the needles and create {an electrical} cost. Then he used a Teflon syringe — a kind of liquid switch gadget — to emit charged water close to the needle.
As predicted by science, the water droplets circled the knitting needle, exhibiting off electrostatic orbits, or actions which might be ruled by electrical attraction.
“These observations may very well be analogous to the habits of charged particles in Earth’s magnetic area and show helpful in designing future spacecraft techniques,” NASA officers wrote.
Pettit additionally enjoys taking part in with digicam exposures and angles to create distinctive views of Earth, notably specializing in mild trails throughout the planet’s floor at night time. He plans on doing extra of this spare-time shutterbug exercise utilizing the upgraded gear obtainable on ISS, he mentioned.
“We have got numerous new lenses on orbit which might be optimized for nighttime imagery. I am actually wanting ahead to getting again on station and taking nighttime imagery to a brand new degree, Pettit mentioned.
Pettit added that he has been protecting his expertise sharp since his final area mission in 2013.
“The way in which you do that’s, you are at all times taking images,” he mentioned. “NASA has … coaching digicam gear that we might take a look at and use, and we have got fairly refined, professional-level cameras. You may’t have a coaching — you recognize, one or two hours of coaching — after which, two years later, choose that digicam up and be an skilled at utilizing it. You must use it, at the least for me, on a weekly foundation.”
