Short Wave - What's It Like To Live In Space? One Astronaut Says It Changes Her Dreams

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Few humans have had the opportunity to see Earth from space, much less live in space. We got to talk to one of these lucky people — NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara. She will soon conclude her nearly seven month stay on the International Space Station. Transmitting from space to your ears, Loral talks to host Regina G. Barber about her dreams in microgravity, and her research on the ISS: 3D-printing human heart tissue, how the human brain and body adapt to microgravity, and how space changes the immune systems of plants. Have questions you want us to send to outers pace? Email us at [e-mail]!See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Shortwave podcast. This is Mission Control Houston. Welcome aboard Space Station. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. There are some big perks to working at NPR. Seeing tiny desk concerts with cool musicians, the big goods people bring in, but honestly, my favorite part is getting to talk to astronauts while they're floating in space. Hi, Regina. This is Laurel O'Hara. I have you loud and clear. Welcome aboard Space Station. Oh my gosh. That's a, that's quite. Welcome. I like it. Laurel, how are you doing?

I am excellent. We have a busy day on board space station today, getting ready for our... We got the opportunity to talk with Laurel O'Hara, an astronaut who's been orbiting the Earth for about six months. She's living in the International Space Station, an experience few humans have had. It's hard for me to imagine what it'd be like to live there, much less look out the window every day and see Earth. The first time I got to look out the window was on the Soyuz spacecraft on my way to space station. And first I saw Earth, and that was amazing. You know, you see it in photographs, but that doesn't compare at all to seeing it in person for the first time in 3D.

And I just saw the ocean and the clouds, this blue and white marble against the blackness of space. And it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. And shortly after that, we arrived to Space Station, and I turned and looked out the window, and it was just filled with one of our gold solar arrays. And that was surprising and also beautiful. I was surprised just to see Space Station in real life. It's this technological marvel that humans built. And simultaneously, something I've never seen before in space, but also so familiar from

all of our training on the ground, it was like seeing an old friend for the first time in a really long time. I bet it was very much like a movie, like you actually could be there. Absolutely. Laurel could only hear me, but I could see her on the NASA feed. You're like twirling the mic and it's floating in space. It looks amazing. That never gets old. She was surrounded by wires and machines in all directions,

and those devices are essential to all the experiments happening in zero gravity, hundreds of miles above Earth's surface. We do a lot of eye exams for each other, and we also do a lot of ultrasounds for each other. How my brain adapts to the space stations. We had bone marrow stem cells that we were analyzing. We were studying age-related liver dysfunction. We're trying to 3D print human heart tissue. Today on the show, we talk with astronaut Laurel O'Hara about the science on the International Space Station,

how astronauts do experiments on each other, and what living in space does to your dreams. I'm Regina Barber. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. So you've done a lot of research on how space affects the body. Can you tell me more about what you've learned and what has surprised you up there? So some of the research that's being done on me is, well, pretty much everything. Researchers on the ground are studying, for example, how my brain adapts to the space station. So I did a series of tests on the ground that sort of. tested how I kind of move, navigate my way through different environments, both 2D and 3D, using computer games. And then I'm doing the same things up here. So we're trying to understand

how the human brain, you know, kind of remaps its environment from a 2D to a 3D environment. And that was one of the, I think, most surprising things when I got up here because it's really easy to get lost or confused about where you are on Space Station. When we do our training on the ground. You know, there's an up and a down and a right and a left. And up here, you can be working on any surface. So I can come into a module and one crewmate is working, you know, on one phase that might be, you know, the wall on my left and another crewmate is working on what I would normally perceive on the ground as the ceiling. And so it takes a while for your brain to kind of figure that out. But now, no matter where I am on space station, I usually know where I am.

So it's neat, just how quickly that happened. Yeah, like that you adjusted. Do you dream? Do you dream? Like, do you dream in these weird dimensions as well? Yeah, that's a good question. When I first got up here, I was only having Earth dreams. But I think the longer I've stayed up here, I've started to have more and more space dreams. Most of my dreams still take place on Earth, but I have had dreams up here in space. And what is that like? How are space streams different from Earth dreams?

Well, you're floating. Most of my space dreams take place on Space Station. And it's really funny to me because I'm not claustrophobic, and I really like, you know, caving on Earth, for example, where you're squeezing into tight places. But most of my space streams up here have taken place in, like, small compartments on Space Station where I'm, like, digging through bags in the rack, trying to find something. And then I think I get stuck.

And so I kind of wake up, like, feeling my way out of the bags in my dream, which is really just my sleeping bag in my crew quarters. And so I'll wake up in the middle of the night, sort of feeling my way around my crew quarters. They're not space nightmares, but they're not, you know, pleasant dreams floating looking at Earth. It comforts me that even astronauts have these, like, anxious dreams that I have all the time.

Yeah, I should keep a dream journal up here. You totally should. The neuroscientists would love that. Okay, so how is space actually affecting your body, though? Like, can you feel it? Like, what do you do? Yeah, for me, I was expecting to feel pretty sick when I first got to space. Surprisingly, I did it.

I felt pretty good and feel very fortunate for that. That's great. But as time has gone on, we all experience fluid shifts in our body where when you're on Earth, gravity tends to keep fluid a little bit lower in your body and everything sort of stays in place. Once you get up to space, that's no longer true. A lot of the fluid that's usually distributed throughout your body moves into your head and neck region. So we get what, you know, swollen faces a little bit and some congestion. And I have definitely,

I've been congested for about a month now and it's just not going away. It's kind of my new normal. And that's really been the biggest impact for me being up here. I have, fortunately haven't experienced things like vision changes, which are also really common. We do do a lot of eye exams on a regular basis up here. Yeah, I was reading that and seeing pictures of you all are kind of doing experiments on each other. How is that? It's super interesting. We do a lot of eye exams for each other, and we also do a lot of ultrasounds for each other. For all of that research, we have a remote guideer on the ground who talks us through the entire procedure. So they're looking at the same screens that we're looking at and helping us find the targets that we're trying to study in that particular session.

and also telling us which buttons to push. But we do it so many times that we're all kind of becoming eye and ultrasound technicians. What kind of other science have you really enjoyed being part of in this mission? Some of my favorite experiments have been the life science experiments that we're doing. We get to work in the Life Sciences Glovebox, which is kind of in front of me in the Japanese module. and an example of that was two experiments we did recently. One was Mabel. We had bone marrow stem cells that we were analyzing.

Astronauts lose on average 1 to 2% of their bone density during a spaceflight mission. And that's per month. And so the aim of that experiment was to study the mechanisms of bone loss in astronauts in hopes of being able to better treat astronauts as well as people on the ground to experience age-related bone loss. Another experiment that we did in the Life Sciences Glovebox was the Space Age experiment, and in that we were studying age-related liver dysfunction,

as well as age-related changes to the immune system. Wow. I mean, that's really fascinating. But let's actually get back to the Space Station. Like, what surprised you the most during your stay? Yeah, there's been plenty of surprises. I think one thing that has been really interesting in space, just from the time that I got here was time. I don't know what happens to time up here, but we'll have pretty long work days.

So one of the challenges in the work days, especially when you first get on board, and you're not only learning how to work on Space Station, but also just learning how to live and work in microgravity. So it's kind of like brain overload. Like you get to the end of the day, and you're just totally exhausted. But that gets better and better with each week that you're on Space Station. And now a day that would have early in the day that would have early in the day, the mission completely exhausted me now is definitely, it feels a lot easier.

So, yeah, you're talking about time. You know, how do you expect to feel once you leave the space station? Like, do you think that your time will change, your perception of time? No, I think one thing that Space Station really makes you feel and appreciate is how precious time is. We really want to savor all of the moments up here. each day that we have up here because it's such a special and unique place and such a unique opportunity to get to have. We want to, you know, savor all those moments. And similarly, it requires,

I think I mentioned earlier, a really high level of vigilance. So it's amazing how fast, when you're working on something on Space Station, how fast a tool can float away that then cost you hours trying to find it or how easy it is just being at this remote. outpost, it is for something to, for you to run into a problem or something to break that is really challenging to fix. So you have to stay really focused and really vigilant all day long. And I think that helps you have this kind of state of being very present and being very mindful and just living in the moment. And I think that's something that's been really nice on Space Station that I certainly hope to bring back to life on Earth.

I love that. I need that. In the next few days, like you just said the next crew comes in, do you have any advice for them? I'm very excited to see them and getting crew eight here, three really good friends and two of them brand new to space, I think, is going to be really fun. I'm excited to get to share space station with them and show them around and show them the, you know, the loops up here. But I think my main piece of advice for them is just going to be to be patient with themselves. It's a challenging new environment to learn how to live and work in, and you just have to, you know, take it slowly, take it one activity, one day at a time.

Thank you so much, Laurel, for talking to us today. And thank you. It was great. Thanks for all the questions. Station, this is Houston ACR. That concludes the event. Thank you. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by a showrunner Rebecca Ramirez.

Rachel and Rebecca check the facts. The audio engineer was Patrick Murray. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Showwave. from NPR.