Kennedy Space Center hosts tests of planetary spacesuit (James Dean – Florida Today, 12/28/15
Research scientists from the University of North Dakota are testing prototype space suit at Kennedy Space Center. Video by Malcolm Denemark
Clad in a prototype spacesuit, the University of North Dakota researcher was at Kennedy Space Center on a recent afternoon, practicing a spacewalk in a patch of pulverized basalt that mimics the lunar surface.
Nelson, 27, bent at the waist, scooped up a collection of colorful balls with a wire basket and, with a twist of his wrists, dumped the balls into a plastic box along with a cloud of fine, gray dust.
“That’s really good,” observed Larry Dungan, an engineer visiting from NASA’s Johnson Space Center, of Nelson’s flexibility. “You could not have done that in an Apollo suit.”
Then called the Apollo Flight Crew Training Building, it housed a lunar module simulator and a rover the astronauts drove through gates onto a lot strewn with boulders and craters.
Today, KSC’s Swamp Works research and development division features a Plexiglas-enclosed patch of simulated space dirt measuring about five feet deep and 26 feet on each side. Nicknamed the “Big Bin,” it’s believed to be the largest indoor, climate-controlled facility of its kind.
Robots typically roam the bin, testing technologies that could help human explorers extract oxygen and other useful resources from soil, which is KSC’s research focus.
Test engineers monitor graduate researcher Travis Nelson as he does a time test scooping up balls while wearing the NDX-1 prototype suit. The University of North Dakota and the Swamp Works at KSC are testing a prototype space suit in the regolith stimulant bin, an enclosed lab simulating the Martian surface.
But the University of North Dakota’s Space Studies Department decided it would be an ideal place to practice with a prototype planetary spacesuit and tools being designed partly through a NASA grant.
Over a week this month, Nelson and Pablo de León, an associate professor leading the project performed a series of “extra-vehicular activities,” or EVAs — the first hosted by the KSC facility since the Apollo era. The bin could possibly attract more spacesuit tests because of its resemblance to the places astronauts might one day try to visit.
“It could be any surface in the solar system that has basalt,” said NASA engineer Jack Fox, who oversees Swamp Works, of the bin. “It’s powdery, pulverized basalt. We got ours from a lava flow in Arizona. And it’s what the moon is covered with and it’s what many parts of Mars are covered with, and asteroids.”
NASA has no near-term plans to land astronauts on the moon, but hopes they might chisel samples from a chunk of an asteroid in orbit around the moon, and eventually reach Mars.
Nelson wore the university’s North Dakota Experimental-1 spacesuit, or NDX-1, designed as a Mars prototype. The puffy, 18-pound suit made of soft, beige material is ringed with black straps to make movement easier when the suit is pressurized.
Pablo de Leon, with the University of North Dakota, helps graduate researcher Travis Nelson suit up in the NDX-1 prototype space suit. The University of North Dakota and the Swamp Works at KSC are testing a prototype space suit in the regolith stimulant bin, an enclosed lab simulating the Martian surface.
A GoPro camera topped Nelson’s white helmet, which was attached to a black hose providing air. If his visor had been tinted red, he might have fancied himself the next Mark Watney from the novel and blockbuster movie “The Martian.”
“I read that book in two days,” he said. “I couldn’t put it down.”
Wearing a Mars suit and equipped with lunar tools, the aspiring astronaut from Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, was happy to step into KSC’s moon-like landscape.
“Everything we do up in North Dakota is either on snow or grass, so to actually find a surface with this density and this thickness of regolith, and to be able to test there, it’s awesome,” he said as he suited up for a two-hour EVA.
Nelson went to work with replicas of a rake, shovel and gripping tool used by Apollo astronauts that incorporated slight changes to test their ease of use.
“We’re trying to take the lessons of Apollo and come up with better tools to assist the crew members of tomorrow,” said Dungan.
Dungan manages a facility in Houston that simulates reduced gravity on other bodies, a capability that potentially could be added to KSC’s regolith bin, or a bigger one, to make it even more realistic.
“How is the temperature?” de León radioed through a headset from outside the bin.
“Temperature is doing good,” Nelson replied. “I have nice airflow around my face. I’m only starting to feel a little bit of temperature increase in my lower extremities.”
“Don’t be shy if you need to sit down,” de León said later.
Following in the footsteps of Apollo legends, Nelson continued his simulated moonwalk at KSC.
“It’s definitely a lot more realistic to what I imagined the moon would be like,” he said.