VOICEOVER:
Station, this is Houston. Are you ready for the event?
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
Ready for the event.
VOICEOVER:
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, this is Houston. Please call station for a voice check.
DR GRAHAM PHILLIPS:
Station, it's Australian Broadcasting Corporation. How do you hear me?
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
Loud and clear. Welcome on board the International Space Station.
DR GRAHAM PHILLIPS:
Wonderful to talk to you. Now, the main purpose of your mission, I guess, was to install that Japanese laboratory Kibo. How's that going?
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
The Japanese module is a spectacular new addition to the space station. Not only is it huge but it brings a lot of new scientific capability. It's been going great. A robot arm that's part of it that we're checking out between getting everything up and running, so it's going great.
DR GRAHAM PHILLIPS:
As you know, we've got high school students here, involved with the Botanic Gardens Trust seeds project. Where are those seeds at the moment?
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
They're right here in the US laboratory. Here they are. They're packaged in an airtight container here and they're being stored in the main compartment in the US module. The US laboratory temperature and humidity is very constant in here, but of course they're exposed to microgravity and they're exposed to the radiation that's not shielded off by the module itself. So they're experiencing the same thing I am.
DR GRAHAM PHILLIPS:
Rachael, you've got a question for Greg.
RACHAEL STANIC:
What might we learn from our seeds project? And what do you hope it will contribute?
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
There are several important reasons why we study seeds in space. There's a scientific interest to see what happens with seeds and plants, and how they grow in an environment where the main variable they're used to — gravity — is removed. The other thing is the possibility of storing and protecting species from extinction, sort of kicking off the exploration of that idea here. The other thing is that if we're ever going to go to other places in the solar system, we're going to have to bring plants with us. Plants are going to be what allows us to fully be self-sufficient where we live. They'll provide for us oxygen and food. We really need to have a completely self-contained life support system, so it's important in a lot of different ways.
DR GRAHAM PHILLIPS:
Irene, you've got a question for Greg?
IRENE GUO:
Do you think your experiments with seeds in space might help us develop new strains of wheat or rice one day?
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
These seeds are being exposed to microgravity and whether or not that will have an effect, it's hard to know. It's possible it may have an effect on their ability to grow, based on results in the past. Radiation certainly affects the seeds, but we get the background cosmic rays, which are the most devastating radiation, the heavier particles… we still get those with some shielding from the solar particles in the air. But the cosmic rays still come through the space station, so we'll see what happens. When these seeds go back to Earth, we'll grow them on the ground and we'll see if there's any differences.
DR GRAHAM PHILLIPS: Katerina has a question. She wants to ask what it's like being a rookie astronaut.
KATERINA PAPADAKIS:
Hi, Greg. Tell us what it was like when you first went into space and how you adjusted to weightlessness.
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
At first, it's really hard to believe. Everything about it is overwhelming. You know, it's a dream come true, and goals come together, and all your hard work paid off all in one moment — it's just really amazing. It's also unreal. When you first get here, it's hard to believe what you're really seeing, and zero-G is wonderful to live in. I'm sure it's going to be harder when I come back, 'cause I think going back to having gravity is a lot harder on you than just being up here and floating.
RACHAEL:
Greg, could you please tell us a bit about daily life in space? What other experiments are being conducted on the station?
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
In the morning, we have a conference with all the different countries, so we go around the world, talk to different control centres and talk about the activities for the day. Then we go off and do our work. Our work can be everything from regular maintenance to fixing something or installing. We're still building the space station, so a lot of it actually is configuring and building these things. Setting up experiments, running experiments, and of course we have our daily things like meals and exercise and that sort of thing. We have Earth observations, we're studying the Earth to understand how the Earth is changing. From here, it's a great vantage point to look and see the changes and understand what the effects are, whether they're natural or human made. There's fundamental physics experiments going on up here. We're studying the effects of microgravity on fluids and materials in several different graphs. There's some very interesting behaviours in industry on the ground and in space. We're studying biology, of course, and life and how life is affected by microgravity and radiation. And then also human physiology. We're trying to understand how to improve our calorie measures, so that we can live in space longer and so we can explore further and live in other places. That's a very big part of what we're doing up here. Of course, we're studying the environment, astronomy and the sun and the environment of space outside the space station. And the last category I like to call 'engineering science'. Trying to figure out how to build systems that allow us to have life support up here and the other things required to carry out the mission. So there's many experiments going on up here and it's a lot of fun to be part of it.
DR GRAHAM PHILLIPS:
To send humans out through the solar system, presumably we're going to need new forms of propulsion. You're an aeronautical engineer. What do you think is the future of propulsion?
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
We've announced our project, to build… basically an ion engine like science fiction stories but we're actually going to mount the engine on the space station in a couple of years, and test it out. The key to the future, I think, for energy on the surface of the Earth as well as propulsion in the near future, is fusion power. That's going to be the way to get around the solar system in the future.
KATERINA:
There's a lot of space junk floating around in space and is this ever a problem?
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
It was a problem yesterday, actually, and it's a timely question. It's not really a problem. We can track all the large objects from the ground and if the probabilities get too high, which is really just a very low, safe number, we actually do a manoeuvre with the space station to avoid it. Just yesterday, we turned the whole space station around. I'm actually facing forward right now, which is the direction we're flying. Turned the whole space station around 180 degrees. We fired the engines from the automated transfer vehicles to the European cargo vehicle docked all the way at the other end of the Russian side of the space station. So, once in a while, we'll do something like that, to avoid some debris. For smaller debris, we have seals outside the space station, to protect us, and like I said, we track the bigger objects.
DR GRAHAM PHILLIPS:
People have spoken about that wonderful moment of looking down at Earth from space. How was that for you?
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
You can get a sense, a feeling in your gut, it's vulnerable. The only creatures on Earth that are able to ask these questions and think about things and take some action to try and protect Earth and protect the species on Earth… It's really important that we do that.
DR GRAHAM PHILLIPS:
Unfortunately we've run out of time, Greg, but thank you very much for inviting us around to your place.
DR GREGORY CHAMITOFF:
Thank you very much. I enjoyed talking to you. Thanks for coming on board.
DR GRAHAM PHILLIPS:
Thanks, Greg, and everyone at Mission Control in Houston, and to you girls too. Been a pleasure having you in here.