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welcome to the space station flight

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control room we have joining us remotely

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from the ames research center mark

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murbach who is the principal

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investigator for one of the experiments

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that went up to the space station on

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board the cygnus it's a satellite

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technology demonstration uh project and

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he's gonna tell us a little bit more

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about that so i think you are the

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principal investigator for tech ed sat

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four what exactly is the investigation

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it's a multi-purpose project really at

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the first order is we're trying to

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develop some technologies and the

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thermal physics of bringing samples back

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from the space station

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and in particular our one of our end

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goals is to bring back something about

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this size if you can see it um this

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beautiful sculpture actually uh it's a

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real protoflight object back from the

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iss and it would carry out small samples

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that we would thermally control and be

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able to bring on a on-demand kind of

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process so

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part of that larger effort is called

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small payload quick return or spqr

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which is a historical acronym also

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so

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the the idea is to be able to send small

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samples from the space station back down

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to earth

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that's correct okay why would we do that

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um so uh the space station has become

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one of our important field centers at

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the field center where nasa has

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numerous field centers this one now is

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in orbit along with our international

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collaborators and um and so we

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we've solved the up mass problem we we

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take a lot of cargo up but there's a lot

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of experiments that we would like to be

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able to get down uh from the space

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station on a on-demand or a more

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frequent uh

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opportunity we are very very fond of our

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space station and the crew obviously so

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we had to come up with a safe means of

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doing this

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so

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from from orbit you you typically use a

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small rocket to do that

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however we certainly would not put a

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small rocket inside the space station

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and have a process because of the

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obvious safety implications so we had to

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rub our chins a little bit and so the

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idea was to come up with a drag device

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to do that and it's not obvious how we

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might do that and it turns out that uh

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even at that altitude 350 to 400

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kilometers there's a very tenuous

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atmosphere and so if you construct a

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drag device

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such that

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for every kilogram you have a square

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meter of of drag area you can actually

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deorbit something in in a few days so we

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started to study that and then ask okay

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how do you do this how do you practice

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how do you do this so that was part of

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the genesis of the the tickets house

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building small

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cubesat objects that actually eventually

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build to a larger capability and at the

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same time doing some very interesting

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thermal physics

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okay so this is a sample this is a

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sandwich of of our exo-brick device the

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exo brick is the substitute rocket at

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the drag device that will bring things

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back from orbit eventually on demand

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and so this is a a one of numerous

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materials but it's a sandwich object you

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can see it's quite pliable we can fold

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it etc

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and it's subject to high temperatures

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also

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and so this is what we're experimenting

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with this is the fabric of the exo break

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that we have on teca set three and four

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so basically we started with a cubesat

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uh that also has wonderful not only

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technological but also educational uh

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aspects to it uh that i'm very excited

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about then eventually we can evolve this

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into what we call a three unit or three

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liter

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satellite which is this size

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so our tickets at uh three four and five

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for example would be uh made of this

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blank and so we also experimented with

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ways of making these cheaper this is an

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extrusion so we waterjet it and um we

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build it up in the cartridge we put the

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exo brick on one side and uh it's it's a

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lot of fun

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and yeah so i work with a group of

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semi-grade beers as i call myself and

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then my team and also a lot of graduate

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interns from local and distant

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universities so it's also the

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educational aspect is uh also what makes

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it a lot of fun so this is really a

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skunk works we do rapid proto flight

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now in a very safe manner and we test

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the heck out of these things but it's

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the whole process is very interesting it

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sounds like it so how exactly now that

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is at the space station what happens how

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do you test it

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so the uh sequence or as we call the

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conops the concept of operations is as

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follows so um once our device jettisons

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from the space station and i should have

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mentioned this is also very exciting

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working with our uh

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our colleagues at nanoracks a local

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texas firm

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we're now able to uh actually

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eject 48 of these things or it's

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equivalent per airlock cycle which is

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great okay and it turns out that we are

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launching a bunch of these also so when

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when it comes to uh our turn we we get

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launched from the uh the the iss it gets

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processed through the jim airlock of our

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colleagues

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from um from

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jaxa and then um

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what happens is that this uh gets very

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carefully launched in a particular

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orientation and direction because we

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don't want to hit the solar panels on

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our highly esteemed uh deer space

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station right so this has to be pointed

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properly and then basically the onboard

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timer kicks on it counts on its fingers

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to 30 minutes and then the the

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communication systems turn on okay then

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we begin to listen for that and then

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for this particular experiment um

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we will we'll wait for several orbis and

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we'll send an uplink command via email

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uh and the the command will be received

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and at that point the exo break will be

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deployed and it will stop tumbling it

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will settle in orientation and it will

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begin as deorbit in the next uh

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several weeks in this case

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and then are you able to retrieve it on

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the ground

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not yet um so we would like to do that

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eventually we're taking small

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incremental steps to do that to make

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sure that uh our techniques are evolving

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so uh tickets at five the number five

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that's coming up for example will be the

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same size um but this will again have

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more advanced communication and control

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and we'll have a device that actually we

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can expand and contract a little bit so

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that actually we can steer this through

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the atmosphere targeting a particular

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location at the von carmen altitude or

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about 100 kilometers right at the very

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top of the atmosphere

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it sounds like a really interesting

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project to be working on we will be

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watching out for it um to to get started

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here on the space station for the next

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round when about i think did you say a

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couple weeks from now or

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um we were listening in our

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teleconference today and it probably it

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depends on the all this uh the

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scheduling so there's a lot of

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scheduling that goes on with the the

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space station of course

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um and so it probably looks like uh

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maybe the end of august when the first

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batch of these things will first come

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out okay we'll definitely watch for that

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thanks so much for joining us and we

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will too

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thank you brandi i sure appreciate the

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invitation we appreciate you talking to

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us again this was mark murbach who is

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the principal investigator for the tech

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ed sat four on board the space station