NASA astronaut shares space flight experiences

By Tina Nazerian     9/23/13 7:00pm

NASA astronaut and chemical engineer Donald R. Pettit spoke about his outer space experiences Thursday, Sept. 19 at Anne and Charles Duncan Hall as part of the Space Frontiers Lecture Series.

According to Director of the Rice Space Institute David Alexander, Pettit has been on three space flights.

The official flyer advertising the event stated that Pettit has spent a total of 370 days in space, including two long-duration stays on the International Space Station and one space shuttle mission.

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Pettit said he thinks frontiers can be found all around us and are places to discover answers to questions we might not even know exist.

"I define 'frontier' as where normal intuition doesn't really happen anymore," Pettit said.

Pettit spoke about his experiments in outer space, which included investigating surface tension forces with a sphere of water, measuring capillary rises in microgravity with soda straws, and making a venigraph generator with Legos.

"We have a whole suite of wonderful things that we're doing on [the International Space Station]," Pettit said. "But because you are there and in this environment, there are other observations that you could make ..., observations that aren't on the script. You make something that's 'Wow, this is different.' These little clandestine observations, this science of opportunity becomes the ... science of the future."

Pettit said astronauts going to the International Space Station can take only a few personal items. He said he took knitting needles for charging demonstrations. 

"It's a little bag ..., [and] whatever you can stuff in there, ... that's it for six months in terms of personal effects," Pettit said. "I didn't take [knitting] needles because I thought we were going to have so much spare time ...; I took [knitting] needles because I could make them out of special materials and use them for charging demonstrations."

Pettit said that in a frontier, even tasks we consider menial are done differently, something he found out when attempting to grow a plant.

"When you're in a frontier, you could do things that you don't normally do at home, partly because what you do at home doesn't even work there," Pettit said. "[Raising a plant] was my attempt at trying to figure out how to do something that comes so [easily] on Earth, in our environment."

Pettit said he faced some challenges raising his plants.

"NASA has these amazing pieces of equipment, these terrariums with [the] power ... to raise research plants," Pettit said. "What I rapidly found out was a spacecraft environment that's designed for human beings is not very friendly toward a potted plant in the corner, especially if you're in a microgravity environment."

Pettit said he struggled to figure out how he could grow plants without a lot of equipment and found a solution in plastic bags.

"If you fold it in the right way, the surface tension forces will control the water," Pettit said. "You can actually use aeroponics as a means for growing these plants. What I did was I raised a zucchini. We were struggling. There's all kinds of problems. [The plants] would almost die ... as I was learning how to make these plants thrive in a weightless environment."

Pettit started a blog called "Diary of a Space Zucchini," written as if the zucchini plant he was growing were a crew member. The blog can be found at blogs.nasa.gov/letters. 

According to Pettit, the Cupola, an observatory on the International Space Station with seven large windows optimized for looking at Earth and its horizons, has cameras set up for taking different types of pictures.

"The Earth does go by quickly, and if you have to stop to change lenses on the camera, or a setting, you might very well miss whatever you want to take a picture of, so you just grab a different camera that's set up the way you need," Pettit said.

Wiess College sophomore Brady Buescher attended the lecture and said he thinks Pettit captured the mystery and wonder of space in the experiments he showed.

"I thought [Pettit's] lecture was absolutely enthralling," Buescher said. "Each experiment made my jaw drop; we really have no physical intuition about space. To hear from someone who has had the enviable opportunity to be in the frontier of space was an enlightening experience."

Buescher said Pettit's comments about the real-world benefits of space exploration stood out to him.

"The hard thing for many to see, and this is what [Pettit] pointed out, is that we can't really know the next huge advancement that could come from researching in space, but simply that we have to push our frontiers in order to continue to expand our horizon," Buescher said. 

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