00:07People on Earth use nonverbal ways to communicate every day, like facial expressions, hand signals, body language, and American Sign
00:19Language.
00:20Astronauts in space have their own nonverbal way to communicate, too.
00:25During the spacewalk and just generally during space operations all the time, communication is hugely important.
00:31So talking to the people who are outside, talking to the people on the ground.
00:34And obviously we have radios to do that, but a lot of times we wind up having to do that
00:37nonverbally.
00:38Hold on. Stop.
00:41The hold signal. So whether it may be sometimes your ears may not be clearing fast enough as the pressure
00:46is changing.
00:46Maybe someone's helping rescue you, but you're still attached and you realize that.
00:50And so in any case, you give them a hold signal and that should tell everyone to stop everything that's
00:56all the movement
00:56and kind of look around and for something that seems abnormal.
01:00You okay? I'm okay.
01:03We really want to check on each other, check on our buddies.
01:06So the way we usually do that is we use the okay hand symbol.
01:11And so we'll use it as a question and as an answer.
01:14So if I'm pointing at Raja and then giving him the okay sign, I'm saying, are you okay?
01:20And if he is, he'll tell me, I am okay.
01:23I see what you're saying.
01:26There's a lot of nonverbal that just comes from knowing and working with people that makes a big difference
01:30when you're working day in and day out, especially on a high stress thing like a spacewalk.
01:34But just the look at someone's face can tell you like either, yeah, I'm good with this plan or I've
01:39got reservations.
01:40Maybe we should stop and talk about this.
01:42And you can do all that with just a glance, even through the glass of the space helmets.
01:48A handful of numbers.
01:51If you're flying formation, which we practiced in the T-38, we also use hand signals just to keep up
01:56with those skills.
01:57And so one of the most common things is transmitting numbers with your hands.
02:01And so 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are pretty easy.
02:04And then the way we do 7, 8, 9, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 without taking our hand off the
02:09stick is to turn your hand horizontal.
02:11And so you can do the same thing with air pressure.
02:13So, for example, if I had a problem with my suit and she was trying to tell me, you know,
02:18what is your oxygen pressure?
02:19And I couldn't talk because I had a communications problem.
02:22I could still tell Kayla, you know, I could tell her a 1 and then this would tell her 1
02:27and 6.
02:28And then, you know, I could do a combination of those numbers to transmit to her non-verbally what the
02:33state of any of my values on my suit,
02:36whether it's suit pressure, water pressure, temperature, all the different numerical values, we can use hand signals for that.
02:43Maybe we could demonstrate a few for each other and see if we can tell what the other person's hand
02:48signals are.
02:49So, I'll go first, Raja, and you can see if you know what I'm trying to tell you.
02:55What do you think Kayla is trying to communicate?
02:59Is she telling Raja she can't hear?
03:01That he needs to clean his helmet visor?
03:05Or asking him what song he's listening to?
03:09Alright, so what Kayla is telling me there is she's pointing to herself, which is indicating the person who has
03:15the problem.
03:15You could also point at someone else, but in her case, she's pointing at herself, so she's telling me she
03:20has a problem.
03:20And then she waved across her ears, which is telling me she can't hear.
03:25Okay, so let's say we have that same scenario.
03:27So we've had some kind of loss of calm, and Kayla came to check on me while I was out
03:31on a spacewalk.
03:32When she got there, I might give her a signal like this.
03:36Can you figure out what Raja is trying to communicate?
03:40That they need to move to the other side of the space station?
03:44That they need to wrap up and finish what they're doing?
03:47Or is he asking her to do a flip in microgravity?
03:52So there, Raja would be trying to communicate to me that we need to speed things up.
03:56Maybe he has a problem that's accelerating or getting worse.
03:59So he's saying it's kind of an urgent situation here.
04:02Let's get a move on, more or less.
04:05Next time you see astronauts on a spacewalk, look out for some of the hand signals you learned today.
04:12You can even try them out with your friends to talk in your own nonverbal code.
04:17For more fun with STEM, visit STEM.NASA.gov.
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