The Russian Space Station Mir is the size of a house and orbits the Earth sixteen times a day. It has been inhabited for over ten years, and has been much in the news recently. Riding High chronicles life on the space station through the personal diaries of the astronauts, focusing especially on one: Thomas Reiter. The diaries are an intimate portrait of daily life in space (which involves a lot of work), and the programmes catch breathtaking views of the Earth as the astronauts point their camera out of the Mir windows.
Programme 1: Living In Space
Tuesdays 14 October 1997 and 12 May 1998, 9.30-9.45
Programme 2: New Visitors
Tuesdays 21 October 1997 and 19 May 1998, 9.30-9.45
Night-time block transmission: 17 March 1998, 05.30-06.00
(two x 15-minute programmes)
Cross-curricular
with emphasis on Science
AGE 7-11
KEY STAGE 2, SCOTTISH LEVEL B, C, D
This Net Note is primarily intended for primary teachers, but may also be of general interest. In it you will find information about each programme, including a synopsis, a list of learning outcomes and key concepts, and some activities and questions to use before and after watching. Also included is some background information, resource sheets, links to other relevant Internet sites, and two photocopiable activity sheets.
Programme 1: Living in Space
Programme synopsis
Astronauts like the ESA's German Thomas Reiter have to prepare for their time in space. After training, Reiter travels in the Soyuz capsule to meet Russian cosmonauts on board the Mir Space Station. We see his living conditions, and how he deals with the day-to-day business of life, including keeping fit.
Experiments on board Mir include studies of the effects of weightlessness on the human body. The cosmonauts' work takes them outside Mir, and includes preparations for the arrival of the US Space Shuttle.
Learning outcomes
Children will have the opportunity to learn that:
- The USA, Russia and Europe have been collaborating on a long-term space projects.
- Living in space makes huge physical and psychological demands on people.
- Living in space has major effects, both temporary and permanent, on the body.
- Mir and other space stations offer unique opportunities for experiments in weightlessness.
- Our understanding of space is growing through exploration and scientific research.
Key concepts
- Humans require air, food and water to live. Exercise and a varied diet are needed for health. The heart acts as a pump, circulating blood through the arteries and veins. The skeleton supports the body, and is moved by the muscle system.
- There is a wide range of reference sources, including IT-based references, and children can select information from these sources in a variety of ways. Challenging subject matter can broaden their outlook.
- Children will be able to consider the part played by science in the development of new technology, the ways in which science explains some phenomena, and the choice and uses of materials in engineering; they will understand that the Earth's gravity causes weight, and better appreciate the relative sizes and movements of the Earth, Moon and Sun.
- The Mir Space Station is a miniature 'world': it takes in energy (from solar power and its own supplies), and uses it to keep people alive in an 'Earth-like' environment. This environment needs careful management and maintenance. The Mir project gives people from different cultural backgrounds the chance to work together as a team.
- To maintain good health, people should be physically active, developing endurance, muscular strength, flexibility and cardiovascular health, and should pay careful attention to physical hygiene.
- The views of space and the Earth from Mir are a stimulus for work in art and craft, drama and music.
Before the programme
Here are some questions to consider:
- Who has been over a humpbacked bridge in a car?
- Who has been on a 'big dipper' ride at a fair or a theme park?
- Who has been strapped to the gyroscopic 'weightlessness' device at a science centre?
Describe what you felt.
- What is it that we all do nearly every single day that makes us weightless? (Answer: jumping - for a fraction of a second we are weightless when we are at the point of neither going up nor down!)
All these experiences give you a feeling of what it is like to be weightless. This programme is about this, and other effects of living in space.
What other problems do you think astronauts (from Europe and the US) and cosmonauts (from Russia) face when living in space?
How can these problems be tackled?
What are the vital needs of the human body?
After the programme
Children could:
- Plan a balanced diet for the astronauts - remembering that they need a high liquid intake.
- Plan an exercise regime that can be followed in a restricted space. (Remember there is no gravity!)
- Design an activity routine that involves work and rest periods, and keeps minds alert.
- Discuss the pressures of living in close contact with others for long periods of time. Devise rules and patterns of behaviour that would make this close contact tolerable. Helen Sharman has said that she felt more alone training in Russia than she did later in the spacecraft. Why would this be? Children may not know Helen Sharman, who was given an OBE both for her work in space and for her later work in promoting interest in space and science among young people. She answered a radio advertisement - 'Astronaut wanted - no experience necessary' - and was selected from a huge field to provide Britain with its first astronaut on an eight-day Anglo-Soviet mission. For further information about Helen Sharman and her experiences in space see Resource Sheet 4.
- Respond creatively to the wonder of space: write, draw, paint, model or act out the routine of the Mir spacecraft.
- Use the Living in Space: Problems activity sheet to highlight the difficulties of living under these conditions.
Background information
Space
Space is a near-vacuum. There is no food, no water, and no oxygen molecules. A few atoms of hydrogen, helium, carbon and so on are very sparsely scattered. To live in space you must take everything you need for living with you.
The food you take has to be light, right and attractive. It rarely is! Much of it is dehydrated, some is canned and some is sealed: salami, for example. The main complaint is that it is 'boring'. The Russian jellied fish was so disgusting that they chucked it out with the rubbish. It burned up in the atmosphere!
In orbit around the Earth, you become 'weightless'. Any massive object in space - a star, planet or moon - has its own gravitational pull. The more massive the object, and the closer you are to it, the stronger the pull. The Space Station is far enough from the Earth that the forward momentum of its orbital motion counterbalances the pull of gravity, so it is in a perpetual 'free fall'. It is like being inside a falling lift whose cable has snapped: everything would float around the lift - until it hit the ground! Long-term weightlessness has strange effects on human beings:
- There is no 'up' or 'down'. Your balance system sends strange messages to your brain. As a result, you may suffer from space-sickness - not unlike sea-sickness.
- Because gravity squashes the soft discs between the vertebrae, you are actually taller (by about 2 cm) when weightless. Bones, which regenerate all the time, get longer because there is no gravitational response.
- Your bones lose calcium and become lighter - a condition similar to osteoporosis. Apparently something in the body 'switches off' the calcification process.
- You feel as if you have been upside-down for a long time. Your heart, which has been pumping blood against gravity all your life, is pushing too much blood to your head. When it has adjusted, your heart slows down by about 10 beats a minute.
- Your legs become thinner because there is less fluid in the lower body: a condition astronauts call 'bird-legs'.
- The air you breathe out when weightless can accumulate more easily, and has to be moved around with fans to prevent you from suffocating. The waste carbon dioxide is absorbed by chemicals.
- Dust doesn't settle, and has to be filtered out.
- You can still swallow, but the food floats in your stomach.
- You have to be strapped down to sleep.
- Most astronauts are struck by cosmic rays - high energy particles, coming from deep within our galaxy. Reiter remembers these as bright flashes when he was falling asleep. He also remembers that he slept very deeply and very well, and never dreamed!
Some of these effects can be countered by increasing food and water intake, and especially by vigorous exercise, which helps keep muscle tone. In space, muscles tend to weaken because they have less to do.
Astronauts also have to cope with the high G-loading of take-off and re-entry. The G-force on re-entry is around 4-G for 7 minutes. (At the bottom of the Big Dipper at Alton Towers, it's about 3.5-G for 1 second!)
Other problems include high levels of radiation, and disruption of natural body-clocks, confused by the lack of day and night.
On top of that, the astronauts may suffer all the stress of living in confined conditions with very few people.
In space, power is obtained from sunlight. Solar panels are pointed at the Sun, and batteries are used when the craft is in shadow. To keep the solar panels pointed towards the Sun, Mir uses gyroscopes and occasional rocket thrusts from the Soyuz capsule. This is called 'maintaining attitude', and is currently one of Mir's most serious problems.
All the children will want to know how you use the toilet in space! The toilet is like a funnel; it has foot straps to stop you from floating away. A stream of air carries the waste through the funnel and into a container. The water is evaporated off and recycled for drinking, or electronically converted to oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen can be used for breathing.
For further information about Thomas Reiter see Resource Sheet 1 and for more information on astonaut training for EuroMir missions see Resource Sheet 3.
Programme 2: New Visitors
Programme outline
The US Space Shuttle Discovery docks with the Mir Space Station. East meets West when the American astronauts make a weightless journey through the connecting modules to Mir.
We see the docking procedure, and take the journey from Discovery to Mir. Breathtaking images of the Earth are visible through the window. We see the Nile, the Suez Canal and the English Channel, deforestation in the Amazon, thunderstorms at night, a meteor crater 50 km wide in Quebec, and an active volcano in New Zealand.
Thomas Reiter leaves Mir on the Soyuz craft and returns to Earth, where he steps out into the Kazakh desert.
Learning outcomes
Children will have the opportunity to learn that:
- The USA, Russia and Europe have been collaborating on a long-term project in space.
- Launching and maintaining a space station is a tremendous engineering feat.
- Mir and other space stations offer opportunities for international cooperation in scientific studies, including study of the impact of human activity on the Earth's environment.
- That we need to know more about the relationship between the Earth and the space environment - e.g: solar/climatic relationship, meteors, magnetic fields, etc.
Key concepts
- There is a wide range of reference sources, including IT-based references, and children can select information from these sources in a variety of ways. Challenging subject matter can broaden their outlook.
- Children will learn more about the physical features of the Earth, about the effects humans are having on it, and about the importance of caring for the environment.
- That the space environment and the Sun are the reason we exist and can stay alive.
- They will be able to respond to a unique view of the Earth, through art and craft, music, drama and creative writing.
Before the programme
Here are some questions to consider with your class:
- What do you know about Mir? Who launched it, and why?
- Why are we learning more about space?
- How will we use the information?
- Why is it exciting that US and Russian astronauts (and our own Helen Sharman) are co-operating like this?
- Who has heard about recent problems with the project? What is the latest news?
- If you looked back at the Earth from Mir, what do you think you would be able to see?
- If you looked at Mir from Earth, what would you see? (Answer: at twilight, a small bright light moving at hight speed - often a source of UFO "sightings"!
After the programme
Here are some activities for the class to try:
Background information
East-West co-operation in space
Russian-American co-operation in space started with Nixon and Brezhnev, who first agreed a joint space venture. On 17 July 1975, an Apollo module and a Soyuz 19 capsule docked together in space.
The Europeans have been working with the Russians quietly for many years.
In 1990, Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George Bush met in Washington. In 1994, two Russian cosmonauts joined the American crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery, coming 13 metres from the MIR space station. Norman Thagard was the first American to visit Mir, staying there for three months. UK astronaut Helen Sharman spent six days there in 1991.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is an international organisation existing 'to provide for and to promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, co-operation among European states in space research and technology and their space applications'. ESA has 14 member states: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. As well as visiting MIR, ESA scientists are collaborating with Russia, the USA, Canada and Japan to assemble a large International Space Station to replace Mir, with an international crew, starting in 1998 and due for completion in 2002.
Mir
Mir is a space station put together by using modules that join up like Lego blocks. When the Space Shuttle docks with it, both are travelling at 17,500 miles an hour. Discovery, weighing 100 tonnes, is manoeuvred by instruments and by eye to dock with MIR. If the docking is faulty, explosive bolts separate the two.
'Mir' means 'peace' and 'the universe'. The first module was launched on 20 February 1986. It orbits at an altitude of between 350 and 400 kilometres, and its core module contains areas for sleeping and eating, a shower and toilet, and exercise apparatus. It weighs about 130 tonnes, and has accommodation for up to six astronauts. In 1987, a module called Kvant ('Quantum') was added, and more modules followed in 1989 and 1990, to add to the observation and laboratory facilities. The normal crew is two: a pilot and a flight engineer. The first docking with US Space Shuttle Atlantis took place on 19 June 1995. Seven dockings between Mir and the Space Shuttle are planned.
The designers of Mir had to overcome many problems:
- Space is a vacuum. This means not only that people cannot live in it, but also that every piece of apparatus or instrument on board has to be sealed in a capsule with its own atmosphere, or made to work in a vacuum. Things stick together, and need forcing apart: a little like forcing the lids from vacuum-packed containers.
- Instruments and apparatus are also affected by the condition of microgravity (apparent weightlessness) in space.
- Because there is no atmosphere around the spacecraft to filter out solar radiation, the side facing the Sun will rise to a high temperature. The temperature on the side away from the Sun will fall below the freezing points of water and rocket fuel. This problem is addressed by turning the spacecraft along its length: a movement known as 'barbecue mode'!
- Cosmic rays from outer space can penetrate the spacecraft and enter the electrical circuits, causing faults and changing computerised commands.
- Micrometeorites appear to be generally harmless - though they have been heard hitting spacecraft with an audible 'clunk'. Space debris is another matter: one Russian satellite was thought to have been destroyed when it hit 'space junk'. (Recently, Mir had to manoeuvre to avoid a dead satelite. It passed within 500m of the space station.
- Water tends to slosh around inside the tanks, shifting the centre of gravity. Mir has had some stability problems for this reason.
Mir had a planned lifetime of five years, but has now been in space for eleven years, and is in trouble. Damage to Mir - notably a collision on 3 July 1997 with the unmanned Progress supply craft, when the Spektr research module and some solar panels were damaged - has left the whole project in question. The module was sealed off so that the crew could repair the hole. There were doubts over the fitness of the Russian commander of Mir, which placed British-born US astronaut Michael Foale in the limelight. At the time of writing, the two Russian cosmonauts have been replaced by two others, and Michael Foale is still aboard Mir. The main computer has malfunctioned. Many people think that this is the end for Mir. The aging Mir may well be replaced, sooner rather than later, by the International Space Station, in which the ESA has a major role.
Credits
Riding High was produced for Channel 4 Schools by World Wide Pictures.
Producer: Martin Rosenbaum
Director: Philip Saunders
Net Note written by John Stringer, edited by Liz Meenan.
Special thanks to Thomas Reiter for all his help.
