A Conversation With Space Station Astronauts
Jan. 25, 2007 — -- Astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams are living in space for six months on the International Space Station, along with cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin. ABC News got a chance to talk with them on Jan. 18, 2007.
ABC News: What do you do for fun on the space station? We've heard about the movie of the week game you play with mission control. (Lopez-Alegria sends down snippets of dialogue from the movie library until flight controllers on earth correctly guess the film.)
Michael Lopez Alegria: The big difference between a shuttle mission and a station mission is that we are not just working up here, we are living up here. Part of life is to relax and enjoy things, and it is our way to sort of keep the ground folks, the flight control team, interested and involved in what we do, not just when we are working but when we are not working, and I think it has really helped morale up here and certainly on the mission control teams as well.
ABC News: Sunita, your hair is definitely shorter now than when you launched on the space shuttle. Why did you decide to cut it and donate your ponytail to charity?
Sunita Williams: I was inspired by a friend of my daughter's who did the same thing, and thought, wow, that is a good idea. I am just happy that I am healthy and had long hair and could give it to someone else. I always knew that it would be a bad idea to have long hair up here getting caught in the fans and getting in each others way. So the idea to cut my hair came as soon as I was assigned to this flight, I knew I was going to cut my hair. I sort of wanted a picture of what it looked like when I had really long hair in space and so I did get my picture taken with the long hair and I knew I was going to cut it off in the shuttle before I came here, so I didn't get the station all full of hair.
ABC News: The International Space Station has evolved into a science platform that will help NASA learn how humans can live in space for a long time. Why is that important?
Michael Lopez Algeria: What we have in common with voyages to the moon and to Mars is that we are up here for a pretty long time, much longer than a two-week shuttle mission. We can really understand what the effects are on our physiology of being in microgravity or in low gravity, what you would expect once we get to a lunar base. So we are looking at the different ways our body takes care of food, how we sleep, and some other things that are sort of giving us a better idea of what we need to do to keep our organism in as good a working order as possible.
ABC News: Sunita, your first spacewalk was during the last shuttle mission. What did you tell your friends and family about the experience?
Sunita Williams: I was amazed that you can look all around 360 degrees and see everything, and to really see the whole horizon, the curvature of the Earth and all the stars as well, was just spectacular, and while we were out there we had the opportunity to see the Aurora, the Northern Lights, and that was just a little bit creepy because it was this green shadow thing coming over the earth. It was pretty spectacular, and I think people were pretty amazed at that type of view.
ABC News: Michael, you and Sunita and Mikhail have four spacewalks planned in the next few weeks. What are some of the tasks?
Michael Lopez Alegria: We hope to be doing some reconfiguration of the cooling lines that carry ammonia. That's what we use as an external coolant outside to take the heat away from the space station, and we will be retracting a couple of radiators away from the older external thermal control system that we won't be using anymore. And we have a couple of other ideas for the U.S. spacewalks, and then on the Russian spacewalk our primary objective is going to be to break free an antenna that is sort of stuck, keeping the Progress on the aft end of the station from being able to undock.