00:00Their mission may be officially over after splashdown, but the astronauts aboard Artemis
00:042 won't be quite done.
00:05After they land, NASA wants to evaluate their ability to exit the Orion spacecraft in more
00:10off-nominal landing scenarios.
00:12After time spent in zero-g, their muscles take time to adjust to the reintroduction
00:16of gravity, and finding their strength again can be a real challenge.
00:19That's why NASA built this, an egress obstacle course to put astronauts' strength to the
00:23test right after they land.
00:25I'm one of the research scientists that's looking at the performance of astronauts
00:29shortly after they land.
00:30What we're looking at here is a mock-up of an emergency capsule egress task, where if
00:35they were to land somewhere unexpected or unplanned, we want to see how capable the crew would be
00:41of exiting the vehicle on their own.
00:43It's got a lot of the same challenges, confined space, limited mobility, obstacles in your way,
00:50they've got to deploy a ladder, so they've got to use some strength and balance to do
00:55that, and it takes a lot of up and down head movements, which can be very provocative
00:59after you've transitioned back from microgravity back into 1G.
01:02After spaceflight, everything is harder.
01:04You're readjusting to gravity.
01:06You've been in weightlessness for a while, and now you've got to bear all of your normal
01:10weight.
01:10The combination of having to support your own weight and having to deal with the inner
01:14ear problems is enough to really kind of make it a big challenge for the crew afterwards.
01:18I'll say, three, two, one, go.
01:20I want you to kind of roll inward towards the ladder and pretend like you've got to stay
01:24within all four of these walls here.
01:26All right, here I go.
01:28You're going to stand up, you're going to deploy the ladder.
01:33Now you're going to clip in that ladder.
01:40Now push down on that top rung while you pull each of the straps, and that's going to be
01:45what tightens it up.
01:49Okay, good.
01:50You've got that tight.
01:51Now come around.
01:51You're going to grab your survival pack, and you're going to take the first three steps
01:55up this ladder, and then you can hand that pack off to me.
02:04All right, good.
02:05Now hand that off to me.
02:07All right, now climb on down.
02:08You can step on that bottom step.
02:10There you go.
02:12Now you're going to grab this pack, and you take a short walk about 25 feet that way, and
02:19back.
02:28And task complete.
02:30All right, that was not too difficult.
02:32No, not too difficult.
02:34And that's generally what the crew feels like, especially anybody that's flown before.
02:37They can see the different head movements.
02:39They can see the postural changes.
02:41They can see having to, you know, bend down, push, and pull at the same time.
02:45Those are all going to be potentially provocative for something like motion sickness.
02:48We are going to see them after the recovery.
02:50This can happen anywhere from one to sometimes as long as four hours after they land.
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