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a big part of the mission of the

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international space station is to get

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humans uh ready to explore beyond low

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earth orbit and out into the cosmos

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when that happens those future explorers

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and their support teams on earth will

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have a communication issue to deal with

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because of the great distances between

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earth and mars or to an asteroid

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communications won't be instantaneous as

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they are now they'll have a delay of

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seconds or even several minutes before

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the signal is sent from earth reaches

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its destination then those signals have

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to come back

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nasa teams have been working on this

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issue and one of the proposed solutions

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is being tested on the space station

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this week

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nasa commentator lori meigs is at the

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payload operations integration center in

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huntsville alabama where they are

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autonomous mission operations express

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2.0 is currently being tested on the

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space station angie haddock is the lead

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for the amo operations here at marshall

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and angie first of all let's talk about

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how we're using the space station to

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test communications between earth and

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mars

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one of the tests that we can do is have

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the astronauts be able to manage iss

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hardware like expressrack that is on

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orbit currently so what is an express

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route an express rack is a rack that's

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on orbit that houses the payloads and

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the express right provides the power

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data and thermal for express rack

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operations

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so going back to the testing just how

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long does it take to send a signal from

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earth to mars um if the if earth and

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mars are currently lined up and as close

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as they are today

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it's about two and a half minutes but it

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could be up to 24 minutes if

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they're not as close as they are today

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so that can make communications between

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the

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very difficult it's a pretty long time

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yes it is so you guys are looking at

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forward thinking concepts

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yes we are we're looking at things that

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can help the crew

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and our spacecraft be able to operate

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without as much ground control as we

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have today

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so the delay that we're talking about is

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relevant for just more than just voice

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communications yes it is um it's not

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just voice we have um data and also file

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transfers

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so that if things were if we were to to

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have a communication going along with um

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the crew that was that was in deep space

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and there was a long period of time like

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24 minutes

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then by the time that we got the

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information and be able to turn around

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to do like a ground commanding it would

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be another 24 minutes so there's a lot

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of things that could happen within a

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half hour

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you guys are looking to fix that tell me

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about some of the previous work we've

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done to look at these communications

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issues yes some of the things that we've

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done here on the ground is is that we've

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had

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like doing robotic

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things out in the arizona desert as well

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as like you know having the

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aquanauts live in underwater habitats

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but those things are not they're not

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high fidelity they they don't have like

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the space hardware so we're trying to

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use the international space station to

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get better fidelity so what types of

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things are the are the crew commanding i

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mean what do they command it's just a

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single single button right yes that we

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have

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tried to automate where it's just like

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everything is automated for the crew

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for them to be able to use in deep space

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missions

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so they can do their own activities they

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could plan their own activities um they

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could operate you know like say payload

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racks they could operate medical devices

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things that now we are

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they rely upon the ground controllers to

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do so amo express 2.0 i love that name

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is the next step

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what is the plan for this experiment

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well um within the past two weeks we had

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the iss crew to

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execute amo express two and they've been

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able to activate and deactivate express

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rock seven on orbit and it's is

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they've done it via the timeline or

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automated procedures and those will

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resided

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via an application that was on one of

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the laptops that was on orbit so they

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were able just to do just a single

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button function

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and it executed like the

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all of the commanding for deactivation

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and activation of express rack and then

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today

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normally the the pro here at marshall

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they're the ones who do the activation

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deactivation of the rack but there's

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also a lot of synchronization between

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marshall and houston

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so that they can because

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some of the things that houston are like

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the the power and the thermal that

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they're controlled over but we were able

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to put all of those the core and the

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commanding

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all together into a automated procedure

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and so the crew was able just to use one

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button function i'm sure they like

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having that control yes

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they like it a whole lot because in case

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that um

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like right now the the ground is the one

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who who's in control of it but if they

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needed it then they're able to know that

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they could you know control the rack

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and so where do you see this going

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what's the next step and areas we need

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to look at for for future communication

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delays

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well we're looking at doing a we're

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collaborating between marshall jsc and

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ames

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academia and like other commercial

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businesses we're looking at trying to

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develop different operations concepts of

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trying to do demonstrations on board the

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iss things that will help the crew for

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deep space missions not to have to rely

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on the ground controllers as they do

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today

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so we've already had a few runs so far

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so good right yes they've all been

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successful and we've been very pleased

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with the success that we've had and

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we've got another run that that will

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occur next week all right good luck with

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that a lot of work ahead angie thank you

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thank you for joining us that will do it

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for us from the payload operations