- Hi there, I'm Frank Graff.

Space may be the final frontier, but it's filled with trash.

What we can learn from historic photos of stars, and we'll talk with North Carolina astronaut Christina Koch.

We're ready for liftoff, next on "Sci NC."

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[gentle music] [gentle music continues] - Hi again and welcome to "Sci NC."

History changed in October of 1957.

That's when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellites.

As more missions launched, more junk filled up space.

And don't forget, everything in Earth orbit travels at 18,000 miles per hour.

Producer Evan Howell talked with North Carolina scientists who first warned about space junk.

[gentle music] - [Astronaut] Oh, great.

Um, we have a lost tool.

- [Evan] In 2023, an astronaut dropped a bag of tools outside the International Space Station and it slowly floated away.

If you drop something on Earth, you just pick it up.

But when you drop something in space, it becomes space junk and it's now traveling faster than a bullet.

- [Astronaut] You see it?

- [Communicator] Yeah, we see it.

- [Evan] When Donald Kessler was at NASA in the 60s, little did he know his name would later become synonymous with space junk.

- [Announcer] We have liftoff.

- [Evan] He predicted that over time nations would launch so many satellites and spacecraft into space, the remains of those objects would create enough space debris to put operational satellites and even astronauts' lives in danger.

- You end up with exponential growth.

- [Evan] It's now estimated there are more than 26,000 pieces of space junk larger than 10 centimeters orbiting the Earth, from old satellite antennae to rocket thrusters as big as a school bus.

Add to that total the more than 190 million other pieces smaller than five centimeters and even smaller than that.

This includes lost screws, cables, or other things broken off from collisions or age.

- And initially they just let it build up, it just remained in orbit because they would be placed at high enough in orbit that it would take them in cases some years, hundreds to thousands of years before the natural decay would bring them back down.

- [Evan] Kessler started as an astrophysicist at the Johnson Space Center at Houston where his first job was to figure out how to protect spacecraft from meteoroids flying in from outer space.

Some of the remnants of the creation of planets and stars that arrive in our solar system at incredible speeds and smash into each other in the process, creating more and smaller versions of themselves.

- I said, "Well, if that's going on in the solar system, why wouldn't this also happen from the objects that we're placing in Earth orbit?"

- [Evan] He wrote a paper in 1978.

That paper postulated there would be a cascading effect from satellites smashing into each other that would put future orbital launches at risk.

His prediction would later become known as the Kessler Syndrome.

- This debris belt was exactly like the asteroid belt.

- [Evan] Think of a spacecraft trying to avoid a beltway of space junk orbiting at thousands of miles per hour above the Earth.

The Kessler Syndrome and the dangers posed by space junk events would over time weave their way into the mainstream.

They would inspire the screenplay behind the Oscar-winning film "Gravity," where chaos follows astronauts after the spacecraft is hit by space debris.

[astronaut shouts] He even got the nod from director Tim Burton when his name was borrowed for a scientist in the movie "Mars Attacks!"

- We're speaking with Professor Donald Kessler.

- [Donald] Hey Don, we're going to this movie.

We want you to come with us.

[laughs] - [Evan] Kessler says satellites are like any piece of machinery.

They get old and break apart from collisions or wear and tear.

They must then be either repaired or be replaced.

Trouble is there aren't any galactic landfills available that will take that trash.

So how did we get here?

The United States launched its first satellite in 1958 called Explorer 1.

- [Announcer] The story of Sputnik 1 dominated the front page- - [Evan] This was one year after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik.

Many say that marked the beginning of the space race.

And it also marked the beginning of the space debris pileup.

Over the years, the US and other countries would send up satellites for weather, telecommunications, and defense.

Right now, there are about 8,400 active satellites in orbit.

But this doesn't include all the satellites launched over the past 50 years that no longer work.

- [Donald] There was a source of just paint flecks, like paint on your house will eventually fall off.

- [Technician] Touchdown.

- [Evan] To give an idea of how dangerous space junk is, a paint fleck.

Yes, a paint fleck that had peeled off an old satellite hit the Space Shuttle as it was reentering the atmosphere in 1983.

Years later, in 2009, a satellite called Iridium 33 collided with an old and defunct stage of a Russian military satellite called Cosmos 2251.

It was a first time an active satellite had been impacted by a piece of space debris.

There have been attempts to get rid of old satellites by space agencies and even various militaries.

The Russians in fact worked up a system that would be seated on a rocket and shoot objects with pellets.

- That just won't happen.

I mean, that's what they actually told me in front of a huge audience, that that just won't happen.

It'll just make a clean hole through it.

And then and I said, "No, that's not the way it works."

- [Evan] Kessler says all options for reducing space junk are very expensive and at the moment NASA can't afford them.

Those ideas include capturing satellites with nets and even harpooning them at high velocities as seen in this NC State demonstration.

So for now, the best option is to better protect astronauts.

And that was done by simulating what happens when your spacecraft is hit by debris flying at high orbital velocity.

- Things are traveling so fast in space that even a small thing can cause a lot of damage.

They shot this particle that's smaller than a BB at a velocity of over six kilometers per second and it made this large crater and then it also made this what's called a spole.

- [Evan] And using that data scientists were then able to create new materials to absorb impacts, a technology that's still in use today by NASA.

- [Donald] It melted the particle 'till it was a vapor and it actually just vaporized and deposited the melted material onto the back surface.

- [Evan] Meanwhile, it looks like space debris overhead is something Earth will need to live with for a very long time.

How it will impact future launches might just come down to our will to invest in a solution.

- [Donald] When I talk to the people within NASA about the only thing that they can come up with is that we just have to take the most economic approach to space.

There's no real simple economic solution to it.

- [Technician] Payload separation confirmed.

- [Announcer] You can watch more "Sci NC" episodes anytime on our website or through the PBS streaming app.

- Astronomers began photographing the stars in the early 1900s.

Since then, scientists have discovered you can learn a lot about the lifecycle of a star by comparing old and new photographs and then seeing how the stars have changed.

So those old photos are important.

Trouble is observatories around the world are running out of places to store them.

[gentle music] The simple act of looking at a photo is kind of like entering a time machine.

The images transport you through time and space.

In a sense, the same thing happens when you turn your eyes to the night sky.

The universe is so vast, the light you're seeing actually left those stars millions of years ago.

Again, you become a kind of time traveler.

- [Woman] February 13th, 1939.

- [Frank] So these secure rooms at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute in Western North Carolina are a true time capsule.

- September 13th, 1921.

Now this particular set of plates and this particular star, there's over 100 of these little plates, and they're taken over a time period, it could be all the way up to the 70s.

They were trying to record any changes that the star might go through and experience and learn from it as far as the evolutionary path of a star.

- [Frank] This is the Astronomical Photograph Data Archives.

- The best way to take this out, I'm gonna set this here and you lift up and there's the glass plate.

Now one would want to find where the emulsion is, where the chemicals are put to take an image.

- [Frank] By the late 1880s, photos of the night sky were etched onto glass plates.

One side was covered with an emulsion.

The brighter the image, the darker the spot on the glass plate.

The field of image was five degrees by five degrees.

For perspective, the full moon covers about 1/2 degree.

The astronomer typically looked at whatever the topic of research was about and put the plate away.

But images of that size contained hundreds of things nobody had looked at before.

Each image a unique record of a specific time and place and a history of optical astronomy.

- This is a print of a glass plate and that glass plate is right here.

So as you can see, it's in black and white.

I don't know what you can see through it or not, okay.

I'm gonna set it back down.

This part is not the emulsion side.

The other side is, so it's safe if you accidentally touch it.

[gentle music] - [Frank] Since the archive's creation in 2007, the facility has played a vital role in collecting, preserving, and curating a comprehensive collection of photographs of the night sky from some of the world's greatest observatories.

The archive's houses almost a half million images.

- We have a collection from Cerro Tololo, an American observatory in Chile, which are those cabinets, two cabinets down this way.

Kitt Peak National Observatory.

We have some from, well, of course Case Western Reserve, University of Michigan.

We have, let's see, United States Naval Observatory, we have about 128,000 of their images.

- [Frank] NASA built the facilities in the 1960s as the Rosman Satellite Tracking Station for tracking manned and unmanned space missions.

By the 1980s, it was transferred to the Department of Defense to eavesdrop on foreign communications.

After the Cold War, it was transferred to the nonprofit.

Who knows what mysteries and great leaps in astronomy discoveries are waiting.

It all starts with a true record of everything we see.

- [Announcer] Check out our weekly science blog to take a deeper dive on current science topics.

- Now to space travel.

Researchers at Wake Forest University are working with NASA on how best to keep astronauts healthy on long space flights.

It turns out there's a lot of similarities between health issues in space and health issues on Earth, and the discoveries being made could keep astronauts and all of us on the ground healthier.

Producer David Hurst has more.

[rocket whooshing] - [David] Despite nearly 70 years of space exploration, there's still a lot we don't know about the cosmos.

- [Technician] On behalf of the entire launch team, thanks for flying with Falcon 9 today.

We hope you enjoyed the ride.

- [David] But one thing we do know is that space wreaks havoc on our bodies.

- The space flight environment is an extreme challenge to the health of humans.

- [David] We rely on Earth's gravity to maintain normal bone, muscle, and joint function.

So when we travel to zero gravity environments like the International Space Station or limited gravity environments like Mars, our bodies degrade.

- Lack of gravity or decreased gravity in the space flight environment can have an enormous effect on human health, and that's because there's never a time here on Earth where we're not exposed to zero gravity.

We have no real defenses against it.

- [David] No real defenses yet.

- Alright, let's scroll through so we can see if there's any degeneration.

- [David] It's what Jeffrey Willey and his team at Wake Forest University School of Medicine are trying to figure out.

- [Jeffrey] That seems pretty unusual up there.

- [David] Willey has helped with five space flight missions to study how to best keep astronauts healthy in space.

Through their research, the Wake Forest team has discovered a link between space and certain degenerative diseases on Earth such as cancer.

- A lot of the conditions on Earth that we want to treat and defeat may have the same cause as some of the conditions that we see in space flight.

And so therefore, therapeutics that may work in space may be very effective for conditions on Earth.

- [David] Doctoral candidates Chirayu Patel and Kaitlyn Reno helped Willey with a recent space mission.

- [Announcer] Liftoff of the Falcon 9 and crew Dragon.

Go NASA, go SpaceX!

- [David] The mission launched aboard SpaceX and studied how mice respond to varying gravity levels in space.

This data can help them figure out potential countermeasures such as artificial gravity and how to protect and preserve joint, muscle and bone health in space.

- There are two major aspects that impact joint health in space flight, one of which is radiation, the other which is a lack of load bearing or gravitational conditions.

Artificial gravity could be one of those components that could help eliminate one of those variables and help provide that loading and potentially preserve the cartilage during space flight.

[treadmill whirring] - [David] And the million dollar question, if it works for astronauts, could it work here on Earth for people suffering from similar issues?

- What kind of technologies are needed to do that?

And how can those technologies that we develop to safely take us to the Moon and Mars, how can that benefit human health here on Earth?

- [David] We still have a lot to learn about the vast universe around us.

- So if we go to that side- - [David] But with every mission, Willey and his team learn a little bit more about how to keep astronauts healthy as we venture to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

- It's really important, especially for long-duration space flight missions, to be able to complete these missions successfully, especially the critical missions, and then also return safely back to Earth.

- We owe it to them, to the investment and to us as a society and certainly to the astronauts, to ensure that they can make it there safely.

- [David] And not only are they making space exploration possible, but also paving the way for a healthier future for all of humanity.

- [Announcer] Want more "Sci NC"?

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Like and subscribe.

- North Carolina astronaut Christina Koch knows all about space travel.

She served as a flight engineer on the International Space Station in 2019.

She holds the record for the longest space flight by a woman, 328 days.

She grew up in Jacksonville, is a graduate of the North Carolina School of Math and Science, as well as NC State University, and she is scheduled to be a mission specialist on Artemis 2.

That's the mission which will send humans on lunar orbit for the first time in more than 50 years.

- We, as a crew of Artemis 2, we like to think that our true mission isn't fulfilled until we see someone walking on the Moon and that's when we know we did our job.

We think about that often.

Every single time we're working with those engineers and trying to make the mission the best that it can be, it's with the thought of the future crews, and that's just a great place for me to be.

This role of being someone, kind of having a pathway and giving to the future explorers on Artemis the possibility to go back to the Moon's surface, that is a role that I'm really excited about.

Some of the new systems are all of the life support systems, so everything from scrubbing the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to providing a breathable atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen.

We have a bathroom now, we have crew displays, we have an exercise device.

So all of those things that really put the human in human space flight are flying for the first time on this mission in Orion.

- No offense, but if I'm testing the life support system, I would be a little, a little nervous.

- Well, it's interesting you bring that up, and that's the exact reason why we have test flight missions.

At some point you have to fly a new system for the first time.

You can't necessarily test a life support system without the humans that it's supporting.

And that's kind of the beauty, that's why we call it exploration and that's what we're looking forward to.

Those riskier parts is what motivates a lot of us in this human space flight endeavor.

- Well, turn that around, though.

Why risk people?

We got pretty sophisticated robots that can do things now.

Why don't just send them?

- What we found in the Apollo missions is that having a human on a mission, being able to think through problems, being able to real time problem solve, to identify rocks on the surface that look a little bit different and change the plan to go gather those, to learn something in the distance that you see, those are the real things that are valuable for exploration and to make sure that we bring those benefits of that exploration, the knowledge gain and the technology gain back to Earth, you really need humans in the equation to optimize that.

And the truth is, we have the technology to do it now.

We're about 50 years after we went for the first time to show that we could be there.

Now it's time to go back to go sustainably, responsibly and stay and really reap those benefits.

- Did you always wanna be an astronaut or was this something that you just kept seeing challenge after challenge and it just kind of led that way?

- A little bit of both.

I definitely always wanted to be an astronaut.

I was that kid that told my early elementary school teachers that I wanted to be an astronaut.

But I also at one point sort of decided that if I was ever going to be someone, to contribute to human space flight, which I held in such high regard since the time I was a kid, I wanted it to be because I pursued things that were meaningful and fulfilling to me, my passions.

And so there was a time when I focused on doing that, on what are the things I can contribute the most to?

What are the things that amplify my talents and where I can learn more about, you know, in the ways that I want to contribute?

It was only after then that I sort of looked back and decided I think I am ready to throw my name in and see if I could contribute to this team.

So it's a little bit of both.

So, almost four decades ago when I was about y'all's age, I loved staring up at the stars through the pine trees in my backyard.

One of my favorite things to tell students, kids, even career people that, you know, early career folks that I mentor, is to reach in the direction of the things that scare you, that intimidate you.

Because what I've found is that those things are things you're intrigued in, things that bring you in that you might find meaning in but that you think are right outside of your reach.

And when you achieve those things, that's when you really amplify your contributions and you give the most not only to the world, but the world gives back the most to you.

So sharing that message and especially sharing that I never expected I would've achieved this dream and seeing that change someone's perspective is really, really awesome.

- What is space like?

- What is space like?

The International Space Station orbits Earth about 250 miles above the surface, and you go around the Earth every hour and a half.

So every day you have about 17 sunsets and sunrises.

That alone is so awesome.

Floating, I didn't even remember what it was like to walk by the end of my mission.

And it's so much fun to just be going about your day, day in and day out, doing the science, doing the maintenance, and you're floating, you can flip in the air.

So there's a childhood wonder all the time in space.

But the real reason I loved my time on the Space Station was the productivity.

Our days are scheduled down to five-minute increments.

So even though that seems extremely regimented, the upside of it is that you are constantly giving back.

You know that you're doing someone's science, you're fixing something, you're upgrading something.

And that sense of contribution along with your crew that's on board is amazing.

And then in your off time you get to go to a giant bay window that looks down on Planet Earth and just watch it go by, and that is incredibly special as well.

So it's a wonderful place and it's a place that brings us answers about things that we cannot answer anywhere else.

There's knowledge and scientific, you know, discoveries that we make up there, and that's the only place we can make them.

So it's special in that way too.

- What do you think about as you're looking out that giant bay window?

And at some point you gotta just look down and say, "Wow."

- You do, you do.

I think there's kind of the macro and the micro.

On one hand, you have a lot of, or I had a lot of self-reflection about, wow, everything I've ever done in my life is down there.

Every person that encouraged me is down there.

Every time I fell and had to dust myself off, it happened down there.

Everyone I love is there.

Everything I know in the universe is in my view right now.

And then there's the macro piece of there are no borders.

And even though you know that going up there, it is striking to look down on a planet and realize that every map you've seen is just a rendering that is overlaid with, you know, sort of made up boundaries.

- Human construction.

- Exactly.

And I think the biggest takeaway is something that my crewmate Anne McClain said.

She said, "When you look down, you realize we're more alike than we are different.

The same things keep us alive.

The same things are what we need to be fulfilled in life."

And that was a really profound shift that I thought about a lot when I was looking down on Earth.

- I've heard talking to astronauts through the years in various stories, they've all said that space changed them.

Did space change you?

- I do think it changed me.

I think the big difference in that sense, though, what you're talking about some people call it the overview effect, for me was a perspective shift.

Similar to the time first time maybe you might travel internationally and suddenly you realize everything you've learned is just one way of doing things.

You thought it was an absolute, but it's just one option.

And when I looked at the Earth from the International Space Station, I realized that it was just a planet in a huge wide universe.

And everything around us that we take as absolute when we look around, the blue sky, the ground, trees, those are just one way of being, one planet's way of producing life.

I didn't see a blue sky for almost 11 months onboard the Space Station and you realize there's things that we have taken as absolutes that really are just one of many ways of being.

And I'm really looking forward to the Artemis mission where we'll not only look down on Earth but we'll see the Earth complete as a sphere in the window against the backdrop of space.

And that perspective is something I really wanna bring back to all of humanity, that knowledge that I hope will allow people to see the same things that I've been lucky to see, which is we are more alike than we are different.

It almost goes back to a question you asked earlier, which is, why send humans?

And one of my answers to that is human exploration has to have a human component or else we're not necessarily bringing everyone's hopes and dreams with us and we may be less able to bring back the wonder and the awe of the things that we see.

If they're taken through robotic pictures, there's something a little bit different than when it's taken by a camera held to a human eye.

- And that's it for "Sci NC" for this week.

If you want more "Sci NC," be sure to follow us online.

I'm Frank Graff, thanks for watching.

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