NASA's Curious Universe - Sewing for Spaceflight

Episode Date: May 3, 2020

Sewing machines, tape, scissors. Just like you might visit a tailor to get your pants hemmed or your suit fitted, NASA calls on a group of very creative problem-solvers to custom-make protective shields for our space missions.

One of the reasons I sew is it's therapeutic. A lot of times if there's something that's trouble of me or I need to think about it, I will design something and sew it. It's being one with yourself. It's just you and the sewing machine. I love that hum sound, the hum of the sewing machine. It calms me.

My name is Paula Kane, and I make clothes for spacecrafts. We need long pants and jackets to keep us warm to keep us warm when we go outside on cold nights. In a way, NASA spacecraft do too. It's really important to craft protective coverings for the probes that leave Earth to go exploring. And the people who create them use tools you might not expect to find

around a space center laboratory. Sewing machines, tape, and scissors. Welcome to NASA's curious universe. Our universe is a wild and wonderful place And in this show, NASA is your tour guide. This week's adventure takes us to some very creative places here on planet Earth. NASA's thermal blanket labs. We're meeting NASA's spacecrafters.

The technicians whose work helps protect our missions from the harsh environment of space. Just as you might visit a tailor to get your pants-happed or your suit fitted, NASA calls on thermal blanket technicians to custom-make-the-the-protective. shields necessary for space exploration. Thermal blanketing is basically like clothes for spacecraft. But it's different. The thermal blankets are a multi-layer installation that either protect the spacecraft from heat or cold. They're custom made, custom design. The outer layers can be a little bit thicker like aluminum foil. The internal layers feel almost like tissue paper. That's how thin they are. And the netting is no different than what you would make a bridal veil out of. It's just

space grave. And I will show you what they look like. If you look at pictures of spacecraft, many of them are covered in what looks like gold foil. These are called thermal blankets. What a thermal blanket technician is, is a person who works with blankets. And the blankets are layers of film. Anything that goes in space either needs a special coating or these blankets on it. And what I do is design the patterns and everything and make these actual blankets, cut them up and tape them and apply them on instruments, satellites,

whatever needed. Rarely is it silent in the lab. You'll hear hammers punching. You'll hear vacuums running. You'll hear the sewing machine going. This machine was built to go very fast, but what we do, we have to go very slow. Like this. Those are the voices of thermal blanket technicians.

Lots of NASA missions would never. leave the ground without their creativity and handiwork. Thermal blankets protect spacecraft from extreme heat and cold that could damage them. These special coverings can also defend NASA missions against collisions with micrometeoroids, very small chunks of rock or metal flying through space. The technicians who work at NASA's thermal blanket labs and for our commercial partners collaborate with NASA engineers to figure out how to best cover space hardware of all shapes and sizes. Each thermal blanket is different, ranging from one layer to 30, or even more.

The technicians who model, prepare, and design thermal blankets have to be able to craft incredibly precise templates. These problem solvers work with their hands and use a variety of materials like netting, capon tape, markers, sewing machines, and even surgical scalples to execute mission requirements. Many of NASA's thermal blanket technicians have a background in the arts, like Paula, who went to fashion school. I was born loving, sewing because of my mother. My mother sews, and growing up, my mother used to watch the soap operas.

And she was a stay-at-home mom, and she loved Young and the Restless. And if you know anything about Young and the Restless, especially back in the day, They used to wear real, elegant, fancy, clothes, suits, that type of thing. And my mother would look and she'd say, she'd look down at me, she says, we're going to make that today. And then we'd go to the fabric store, we'd pick out the pattern, the fabric, and then she would make it. And I was like, I want to do that too. So from watching her, and then she taught me how to sew, it just inspired my love of sewing and designing. And then from there, I decided to go to school for fashion design.

There was always a part of her that was fascinated by NASA. I always kept up on the latest fashion design stuff because my degree is in fashion design. And they had a job under fashion design. It said, do you like Star Trek? And are you a Trekkie? And I was like, uh-oh, because I love Star Trek. And I looked at it and it said something about a thermal blanket technician. And I called and it was here at NASA.

And I went for the interview. and I was like, oh my gosh, I got behind the gate. Walked around, they showed me the facility and what I would be doing, and I got the job. It takes people from all kinds of backgrounds and areas of expertise to make a NASA mission possible. The range of the backgrounds that people come from for a thermoblanket technician is interesting

because mine is sewing and design. We have a person who's a graphic artist background. We have a person who, She did draperies, that type of thing. Their ideas are a little different, which is good. You need different here. You've got to think out of the box. Sometimes you can't always draw everything out,

so you have to be able to think about it in your head. Like, how will that unfold? How is that going to fold up? How is that material going to work? How are you going to cut it? And be able to do it sometimes a little bit quicker than you would want to. So you've got to think on your toes. Paula's experience in the fashion industry prepared her for a job at NASA.

But that didn't mean she wasn't nervous at first. When I first started here at NASA, I was very nervous my first day. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was like, oh, please, don't let me mess up on anything. I remember saying a prayer. And I said, my father always taught me, you know, if you don't know, you ask. Don't mess anything up. You ask first.

So I said, as long as I remember, just to say, you know, I'm new, and can you help me and that type of thing. And it was interesting because when I first came in, the first project, one of the very first projects was working on the servicing mission for Hubble. To me, personally, when I think about NASA, I think about Hubble. I mean, I grew up looking at some of those pictures and piquing my interests about space and what's out there. So to come in knew my first week I was doing something on Hubble. Heart was in my throat again, but I just took my time and the people in the Blanket Lab were very helpful. Paula rose to the challenge and hasn't looked back since.

I've been here at NASA for 12 years, and I thought I was only going to be here for about three. I said, oh, I'll give it about three years. Then I'll go back home and work at home, and I loved it so much. I've stayed. I get a special feeling knowing that things that I have made, things that I've touched are up in space, because I think about the fact there's not that many people in the world who have that opportunity, and this is something that I basically do every day. I just feel a little special, you know, it's like, yeah, I mean, I look like it,

but, you know, I've got stuff up in space. Thermal blanket technicians like Paula have helped prep a variety of missions, like the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope and Parker Solar Probe. They get to be involved in a range of projects. I am a person who does not like to do things over and over again, and working here is different almost every day, and I think that's what keeps me here.

Over at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, Lynn Pham has been making thermal blankets for almost 20 years. Before that, she emigrated from VIEG. Vietnam and worked as a seamstress in Los Angeles. When I started, I got paid $2,10. But then it's a piecework. That's mean the faster you make, the more you make money. So I got up to $5 now.

So it was pretty big then. That was, what, 30 years ago? Over 30 years ago. Wow. Lynn decided to go to trade school to learn about making electronics. By the time she started working at JPL, Lynn knew how to cable and solder. She could structure wires and work with metal. Those skills, combined with her sewing background, made her a good fit for thermal blanketing at NASA.

I would never imagine that I came here, got to work for NASA, and sent something to space. I would never dream or think that I would be able to, with my talent, that I would be able to work something this big, this great. During her first year at JPL, Lynn was able to apply her cabling skills to the Cassini mission, the first satellite to orbit Saturn. Through cabling, Lynn's hands touched spacecraft that travel to Mars. But it was a little harder for Lerner. Lynn to see the full impact of her work because she never saw the end product until she

became a thermal blanket technician. I like blanketing because it's from beginning to the end. I got to see, I got to fabricate it, I got to install it, and that was the last step before it goes. So it's from my job from beginning to the end versus the cable you only build and you don't know what after that. Yeah, I got to follow all the steps throughout, the tests and everything. So it feels more like you see what, like that you have a baby, right?

You conceive it and you see it come up. And then she's grow up and gone. That's how I feel about what I'm doing, thermal blanket thing. Although the missions Lynn worked on felt like her baby, her own children had a hard time understanding what it was their mom did. I tell my kids when they're little, they ask, what you're doing? I keep explaining, they couldn't understand. I said, just think of it.

It's like making dress it for you. So I make it dress it for the spacecraft. With thermal blanketing, Lynn was able to see the whole process. Dressing spacecraft for flight gave Lynn a new sense of curiosity for the mission she worked on. The Mars rovers, spirit and opportunity, really impressive. her. The twin rover, that's when we got a lot more public exposure. Then I realized more that, oh, wow, this is really big, something out of my imaginary.

I always say, how do they calculate it? That it landed right there. That's amazing. So much of what NASA can do is only because of the hard work of employees at all. all stages of a mission. For Paula, the teamwork at NASA means a lot. It's fun and refreshing that you work with a team and even beyond the team that's in the blanket lab,

everything that we do here in NASA, it's hand in hand. We're all one big team because you can't do one thing without the other. And that's what I love, because it shows you just how it should be, I think, in the world. You have to work with everyone. work with everyone to get along and to get things done. Spacecraft really can't survive in space without the careful work of the people who create their protective coverings. Think of it as choosing just the right outfit to wear before stepping out into a blizzard.

If anything is out of place, you'll find it hard to function. NASA's spacecrafters are making sure our missions are prepared too. They sew the blanketing and dress NASA's missions up before the day. they begin their journeys in space, where they'll be safe and bundled up and ready to get to work. This is NASA's Curious Universe. The Curious Universe team includes Elizabeth Tammy and Michaela Sosby. Our executive producer is Katie Atkinson. Special thanks to Colin McNutt, Leslie Mullen, Liz Landau, and Rylund Heggy. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it with a friend. and rate and review us in your podcast app.

And join us next week as we step into the field.