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>> Welcome back to Building 9, the Space Vehicle
Mockup Facility here at Johnson Space Center

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where we've got some asteroid
simulations going on.

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We're back now talking this
time with James Johnson,

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who is the test director for this simulation.

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Thanks for talking with us, James.

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>> Thanks.

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It's my pleasure, good morning.

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>> So when we finished talking
with Mike Gernhardt earlier,

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we were just getting starting
with some ARGOS work.

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Can you kind of tell us a little bit
about what's going on behind us, here.

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>> Sure, excellent.

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ARGOS stands for Active Response
Gravity Offload System,

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and it's just one of several different
facilities that we're using here

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at Johnson Space Center to go ahead and evaluate
doing near-earth asteroid simulated EVAs.

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So part of overall Desert RATS test is to
really kind of do two things right now,

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and that's first of all evaluating this new
second generation space exploration vehicle,

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in addition to evaluating some of the
different facilities that we have here at JSC,

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and how we might use those for fuller
fidelity tests coming up in August.

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>> Okay. And so we're going to take a look at
the space exploration vehicle later in the hour,

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but right now we talked earlier
about how we want

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to get the geologist perspective
and the astronaut perspective.

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So we've got Jose Hurtado, a
geologist with the University of Texas

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at El Paso, banging on some rocks, I guess.

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What is that going to teach us?

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>> Exactly, exactly.

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Well, what we're trying to do here in
evaluating the facility is get a couple

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of different perspectives.

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And as I believe you heard Mike mention earlier,
it's good to have an astronaut perspective,

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as well as a geologist perspective, because
they have two different views as to how

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to actually conduct a hands-on exploration.

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When you go to an asteroid or
any type of near-earth object,

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the main driver is going
to be science, of course.

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So we want to have that perspective.

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And what Jose is doing over here is
practicing just simple sample collection.

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Most geologists will take a rock chip sample
to be able to get a piece of a full story

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as to what the local geology is telling
them about the formation of that location.

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Obviously, those techniques become
a lot more complicated when you're

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in a micro-gravity environment,
which we're kind of trying

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to simulate here using the ARGOS facility.

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>> So you can't just get out on the surface
of an asteroid and start picking up rocks?

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>> No, no, this is not quite that easy.

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And we're still learning about
exactly how we're going to do that.

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We're learning about the asteroids and then
here we're learning about some techniques.

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So there's going to be some iteration.

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As we learn more about the asteroids, we're
going to have to go back here and kind of back

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to the drawing board a little bit and tweak
the concepts that we're testing out here.

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>> Okay. And this is all part of what
we normally call the Desert RATS test,

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Research and Technology Studies, and desert
because it's normally out in the desert,

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but this year we're going to be
doing it here in Houston, right?

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>> Exactly.

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Yeah. It actually started back in 1997 with just
a small team of about four individuals heading

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out to the desert, mostly
around Flagstaff, Arizona.

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And as they went out there, they
were evaluating suit concepts.

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Well, that's grown from just spacesuit concepts
to really taking a look at how you're going

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to conduct missions, you know, on
the moon, on Mars, or on asteroids.

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Right now we're in a year where we're kind
of building up new generation vehicles,

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and so we're developing some new
technologies and new concepts.

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So it didn't quite make sense to take
everybody back out to the desert this year.

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So instead, we stayed a little more in-house
and took advantage of more of the tools

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and facilities and personnel that we
had here in-house to kind of refine some

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of our concepts before hopefully
return to the field in the future.

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>> And so this month's test,
we're actually to get ready

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for some bigger tests that'll
be taking place this summer?

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>> Um, exactly.

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We plan on doing the bigger
tests here at JSC, as well, just,

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as I mentioned earlier, kind
of increasing the fidelity.

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We hope to have an operational team over
in the Mission Control Center, actually,

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in one of the small rooms
that's available to us.

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And we will try to really simulate time delays
and that full interaction between the crew

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and the Mission Control Center
in that full-scale simulation.

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>> Okay. And so, what exactly is your
part in all this as a test director?

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>> Well, it's really a job of trying
to bring all of the pieces together

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so we can exercise these tests or
these evaluations and simulations.

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So it's a lot of the coordination up front,
as well as also the realtime operations,

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making sure everything is running smoothly,
we try to have things going as clockwork.

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And also dealing with the unexpected, too.

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You know, sometimes, especially as we're
learning here on-site, we're faced with,

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you know, very unexpected events in having to
coordinate with other tests going on near by.

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>> Uh-huh.

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>> Now that is one benefit of when we're
out in the field, you know, the rattlesnakes

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and the rabbits don't seem to
mind as much with our testing.

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So here we have to make sure we're
good neighbors in good [inaudible]

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with everybody else who's
trying to do their testing.

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My job is to try and really coordinate that.

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Make sure everything runs smoothly, and to get
the data collected that we need to collect.

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>> Okay, well thank you so
much for talking with us.

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We really appreciate it.

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>> Well, thank you.

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>> And like I said, we'll be back a little
bit later in the hour to take another look

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at the space exploration vehicles,
part of the tests that are going on.

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So back to Kiley [phonetic].