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we've all heard the term of phrase

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flexing your muscles but probably not

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consider that the International Space

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Station is constantly flexing its

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muscles in a way it does wiggle and move

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as well as orbit in a straight line and

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knowing that this occurs has an

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important effect on the design of

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experiments that are going on inside

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important question though is how do you

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measure that movement nasa commentator

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Lori Meggs at the Marshall Space Flight

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Center caught up with the principal

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engineer for an experiment that has been

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measuring the movements of the space

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station since 2012 this particular

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experiment that we're running here than

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the flexure experiment really is

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designed to capture information about

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the motion of the wiggle and the flexing

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in the station that is known to occur at

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these locations but something that's not

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readily available because the sensors

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that can measure this are not always

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activated or there may not actually be

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sensors in the vicinity where we're

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operating and we're located very high in

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the station and the the ability to

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measure the the flexing motion something

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would be very useful to other

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experimenters that may have payloads

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that may actually be birth near us so

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that's really what we're trying to do or

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we're utilizing the antenna in ways not

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initially designed to be able to capture

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this data what does this flexure we're

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talking about simplest analogy be you

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know driving a minivan with your kids in

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the backseat and they push off the walls

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or they bounce around you actually feel

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that wiggle in the car and that's

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exactly what happens you know when the

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crew is activated and they're not

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sleeping they push off from the various

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modules to locomote themselves

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throughout the structure and so when

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they do that push off because space

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station is so very large starts exciting

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what we call these vibratory modes and

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the system basically flexes and moves

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and you'll start to see scissoring

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motions so you have this large 100 meter

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structure which is starting to scissor

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and twist and do all these bendings and

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that those sorts of things can play

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havoc with pointing experiments that may

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be located on these truss structure so

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we say flexure I'm talking about sort of

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this twisting motion that me

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out in the far reaches of the station

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how can it be used on earth and in space

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how can the information that you learn

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from this

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well I think you know we're really

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trying to supply a piece of information

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for future experimenters and most of the

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flexing that we're trying to measure

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obviously no one exists quantities the

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frequencies are useful for optical

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communications experiments these

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experiments require really high

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precision pointing and in order to

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stress their systems to be able to

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understand if they'll actually work they

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need to be able to understand what these

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flexures are and so it's important to

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have an understanding of what the

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magnitude of this is you can kind of

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prepare the experiment prior to it being

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launched prior to it being flown so I

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think what we're trying to do is provide

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useful data for future experiment or

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switching a little intern benefit and

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longer in a longer duration longer

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timeline activities for instance optical

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communications for deep-space pointing

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and things of that nature how long have

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you been on this station and how long

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will this go on

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well we've been running since 2012 you

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know we launched in August transited and

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then were birthed and began and started

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our commissioning activities in August

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of 2012 and we've been operating ever

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since we've been basically a continuous

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shift of operations of an Operations

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team and we've been supporting and will

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probably continue for several years to

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come you know with new directives from

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the scan program office what have you

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learned so far well that's that's that

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would take probably more than this

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interview to conduct that specifically

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for our tests here you know we really

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you know when we first ran this

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experiment is very difficult to extract

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this data and make sense of it but we've

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really we've really refined that and and

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we now have a very good sense of we can

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actually use this this ka-band antennae

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not originally designed to do what it is

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being used for to actually conduct these

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types of experiments to actually get

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this flexure and we're supporting other

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activities one of them as a discrete

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thruster firing tests and we hope to

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activate our payload to be able to

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capture that information as well

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something that again we have originally

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intended to do but something that we can

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the engineers normally will track a data

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satellite with a ka-band antenna but

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this team has explored using the Sun as

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a radio source for ka-band tracking

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which makes it a unique

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first-of-its-kind experiment and it's