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there are many of the activities and

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experiments that are going on on board

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the international space station they're

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actually aimed at getting

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uh getting us human beings ready to

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expand human exploration out into deep

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space

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nasa's springboard to the exploration of

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asteroids and eventually to mars and

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nasa is actively preparing for those

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missions right now

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in fact today underwater out at the

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neutral buoyancy laboratory here at the

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johnson space center uh astronauts stan

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love and steve bowen are trying out some

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of the tools and techniques that we

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would use to explore an asteroid they've

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agreed to take a few minutes right now

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to talk with us about what they're doing

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it's our first underwater interview from

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the nbl good morning gentlemen stan love

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can you hear me

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loud and clear how do you have me we got

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you a five by five stan would you start

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by explaining to us what you guys are

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doing down there today

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sure we're doing two main things here

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first of all

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we're working on the techniques and

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tools that we might use someday

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to explore a small asteroid it was

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captured from orbit around the sun and

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brought back by a robot spacecraft to

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orbit around the moon

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and when it's there we can send people

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there to take samples and take a look at

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it up close so that's our one main task

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we're looking at the tools we've used

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for that how we take those samples

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the second thing we're doing is testing

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whether a an upgraded version of our

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bailout and survival suit

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basically similar to the one we used on

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the space shuttle can work as a

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full-blown space suit for doing space

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walk and that's the suit you're wearing

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now right correct that's the orange it's

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called a modified asus suit

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and if you remember the uh all the

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footage you saw of shuttle crews

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marching out to go strap into the space

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shuttle wearing those orange suits

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that's this suit with some important

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upgrades

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for example what's different about it

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other than the color

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the color's still the same

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it's uh life support connectors are

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completely different it's also been

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modified so that it fits us more snugly

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and gives you a little bit more body

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mobility and it's been biased to put the

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arms in a better working location for

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steve is is there behind you uh can you

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tell us a little steve how working in

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this suit and on this this sort of a

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project would be different than the the

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kind of tasks you've done on seven space

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walks on the space station

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well when you are working in the

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emu you know it was designed to operate

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in space and to do those tasks and

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uh so two other upgrades to these suits

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the gloves

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and the boots are both from the emu

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so they help with your ability to do

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work and originally orion was designed

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without any eva capability at all

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and the crew office and some others felt

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very strongly that we needed to have a

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contingency capability

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and so the idea of using doing an

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umbilical spacewalk

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in a in the suit you were launching and

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landing in aces at the time

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uh

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came to be a concept and so once we

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tested that

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we found that we actually had better

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mobility than we anticipated uh still

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have a long way to go to get any real

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useful mobility

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um

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and as far as what we're what we will be

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able to do in this suit we just don't

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know because it needs some significant

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modifications to make it uh easy to

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translate as you can see you know i

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can't stretch my arms out as quite as

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far as we're used to in the emu and

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the work envelope is very small it's

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hard to go all the way across

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so uh as we get through as stan said as

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we look at these tasks these tasks are

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outstanding to help us develop what

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needs to be modified in the suit as well

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uh

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they're just two concepts that seem to

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work well together to

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potentially achieve this mission apart

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from the suits what else do we still

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need to work out before we can

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go to an asteroid and do something

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i'll let stan explain that he's the one

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playing with the coals today

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oh there's all sorts of things um

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uh for instance from lessons learned

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this is uh steve's in my second uh

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second run in this suit last time we

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learned that if you try to use a

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geologic hammer in a spacesuit where

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your work envelopes right in front of

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your faceplate that's not really a very

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good idea so we still have a lot of uh

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room for improvement on tools and then i

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guess the the biggest unknown for going

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out and

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doing a spacewalk on a captured asteroid

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is what the asteroid is going to be like

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the small asteroids that we could go and

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get with the robot ship are tiny they're

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you know

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a few yards across and even in the

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world's finest telescopes they're a dot

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so you may not know till you get there

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whether you're dealing with basically a

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pile of gravel

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that's loosely held together by its own

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weak self-gravity

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or it could be a solid chunk of nickel

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iron

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and the way you would move around on

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those the way you would take samples

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from them are completely different and

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at this point we just don't know what

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we're getting so we're kind of exploring

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what we can here in the pool so that on

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the real day we can have a better chance

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of doing it correctly and that's exactly

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why we do it

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uh stan and steve i really appreciate

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you taking a couple of minutes to talk

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to us it's it's fun to to do that and to

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see what you're working on there good