Exploration Frontier

ALUMNI PROFILE Robert Behnken Furthering the Exploration Frontier Robert L. Behnken (MS ’93, PhD ’97) has been serving as the 14th chief of the NASA Astronaut Office for the past two years. He is overseeing ENGenious: How ENGenious: Spacewalks are so the day-to-day operations of does the space suit glamorized, few of us think about the Astronaut Office as an protect you? How this level of detail and this much long does it take to potential danger with just the suit. exciting new chapter in space be fitted for one? What else could happen? exploration in the post-Shuttle Behnken: The suit Behnken: The spacewalking suit has era begins: one that is expected itself is very much an an elegant mechanical engineering to feature the inaugural flights of exoskeleton for your design; it doesn’t need power to pro- body. It protects you vide basic life support. If the suit were U.S. Commercial Crew vehicles least sometimes available! At that from outside temperature extremes to lose electrical power, it would still and the first piloted voyages age, I could do it and it paid relatively and from being in a vacuum in space, provide breathing air. You could still beyond Earth orbit in almost five well so it was worth the effort, but as clearly a place that we human beings get some cooling out of it. You could a lifelong career, it can be quite a bit are not designed to operate in. It’s still make it back inside the space sta- decades. harder on your body than being an very important for that exoskeleton tion. With power, the suit of course astronaut. to be the same size as you. It’s a rigid works significantly better. During a ENGenious had the opportunity to structure and as you move your body recent spacewalk, however, a failure in interview him at the Johnson Space ENGenious: How has your Caltech inside of it, if the suit and your body the suit pumping system caused the Center, where he also suited up with education influenced you? aren’t identically sized, you could water used for cooling to accumulate Robert Behnken preparing for a practice spacewalk in the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. fellow Caltecher and astronaut Stan- stretch or compress an elbow, a shoul- in the helmet of a crewmember who ley G. Love to carry out a practice Behnken: My graduate advisor was der, or some other joint in a way that was outside the space station in the contingency spacewalk in the NASA Professor Richard Murray, and he it shouldn’t be. We put significant vacuum of space. Clearly you can’t ENGenious: How has your Caltech tive that you’re going to earn one Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. espoused a hands-on approach com- effort into ensuring an exact fitting take the suit off outside, and so he experience helped in your career? advanced degree, and while maybe bined with a strong theoretical back- so that the person who puts on the and his partner rushed back inside it’s in mechanical engineering, that ENGenious: What inspired you to ground. That’s probably the thing suit does it in a safe way. As for how to remove his helmet. In the future, Behnken: One of the things that was shouldn’t limit you. If you need to become an engineer? that’s been the most valuable, being long it takes to get fitted for a suit, our crewmembers are all prepared really brought home to me at Caltech learn electrical engineering to do your able to translate the mathematics or it depends on how close your body with more options in response to was the importance of taking a jack- research, if you need to learn phys- Behnken: My father is a construc- theory into real things. For example, is to the suits and pieces of suits that this failure. One is to turn the pump of-all-trades approach to problem ics—learn those things. The degree tion worker, and when I was young when we go out for a spacewalk, have already been built. To produce a off that moves the water around. solving. When it came time to do you had earned shouldn’t constrain I saw firsthand a lot of the projects someone has to understand and then set of gloves for a specific individual There’s also a snorkel that will allow research, we didn’t have the mindset your ability to learn in any area re- that he worked on. Whether it manage the risk associated with the takes well over a year. I’ve been an you to breathe from another pocket of being a specialist who only looks at quired to address your research. was pumping stations, pipelines, or theoretical charging levels on a large astronaut for quite some time and I of oxygen inside of the suit. There is one little area. If you needed to learn something else, I was interested in all structure that’s moving in low Earth don’t yet have my own set of gloves also now a system for absorbing water to write computer code, you learned ENGenious: How would you de- the machinery being constructed or orbit. We need to understand the because there are some that are close should it pool in the helmet, so that how to write computer code. If you scribe your professional contribu- that made the construction possible. physics behind this and what the re- enough to my hands that I can suc- it can’t accumulate on the space- needed to build an experiment, you tions? But since I also spent some time percussions are going to be. Practical- cessfully operate in them. They still walker’s head. Losing electrical power built an experiment. You addressed working as a construction worker in ly, that translates into something very injure my hands somewhat; I did lose or accumulating water in the helmet the problem from all directions and Behnken: We astronauts are often the summertime in St. Louis, I also real: What is the risk of electric shock fingernails during the training for and are just two of the many things that picked up whatever skills you needed just a small piece of a much larger learned that it might be nice to have to the astronaut inside the space suit execution of the spacewalks on each astronauts are prepared for going “off to go forward on it. Those I learned puzzle. The astronaut on board the a job where air conditioning was at and how do we best manage that? of my missions. nominal” during a spacewalk. from at Caltech had the perspec- International Space Station (ISS) or 10 division of engineering & applied science ENGenious ISSUE 11 2014 11 ALUMNI PROFILE ALUMNI PROFILE It is extremely cumbersome to bring health impacts include radiation samples back from the ISS. As we exposure, the fact that your skeleton continue to move toward doing more is not being loaded in the same way biological science on board, if for as when you’re on the ground, or example monitoring devices become one of the other phenomena associ- implantable, we’d certainly be inter- ated with zero gravity. The skeletal ested in taking advantage of them. changes are particularly interest- Devices that allow us to not need to ing; astronauts after long-duration return samples would be hugely ben- missions have structural differences eficial, as well as medical examination to the interior of their bones, even equipment that crewmembers can use though their overall bone density on their own with limited coaching may remain relatively constant. Our from a ground team. For example, we astronauts haven’t yet aged enough for NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Expedition regularly do a significant number of us to see what the full repercussions 36 flight engineer, conducts an ocular eye exams in orbit now because it’s of these changes will be. How much health exam on herself in the Destiny laboratory of the Earth-orbiting International been discovered that the geometry of monitoring of these astronauts as they Space Station. astronauts’ eyes are changing dur- age is appropriate is an active area of ing prolonged exposure to the ISS discussion. One of the intents of such environment. It’s unclear if it’s due monitoring would be to truly under- Behnken: I mentioned the eye phe- to a zero-gravity-induced fluid shift stand what the impact of the space nomenon that astronauts are facing that increases intracranial pressure, flights on the human body actually right now. There are other areas from carbon dioxide in the environment is. It’s very much a statistics problem a physical-phenomenon perspective changing the chemistry of the blood, because the physiology of humans is that need to be managed in prepara- or some other phenomenon result- so diverse, and it will take more data tion for a longer stay in space than ing in pressure on the back side of points—i.e., more astronauts who we have on board the space station. the eye and changing the shape of have flown these missions—in order The biggest challenge is the radiation the eye and impacting the optical to develop these statistics. It will also environment, and as you can imag- International Space Station nerve. So we have new equipment on take an astronaut’s lifetime for us to ine, there are many ways to address board to measure this phenomenon understand if their eyes completely this challenge. Adding shielding that and provide the data to the investiga- recover or regress, if their bone health physically protects you from that radi- tors multiple times throughout the is impacted as they go through the ation environment is one solution, but who repairs the Hubble Space Tele- have from Caltech.

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