Do you ever wonder if NASA spends tax dollars well? The image above is from Saturday's attempt by two US astronauts to fix an ammonia leak on the International Space Station. Can you make them out?
How about in this screen snap? (All snaps were done Saturday morning as NASA live streamed the effort.)
Now look at this one.
What happened? NASA did a scheduled upgrade in the first hour of the effort. The upgrade makes all the difference in the world. Suddenly the image was crisp and clear.
It matters not just for reviewing the images right now but because of who the feed is intended for.
The NASA Control Room is reviewing these efforts in real time and what they can see makes a huge difference.
Grasp for a moment that there was a leak and astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Christopher Cassidy had to go outside of the station to attempt to locate and repair the leak. There's no Home Depot floating in space that they can stop off at for tools or instructions. They need the control room to know what is going on, exactly what's going on.
And it's not easy. We'll assume that sun spots and the great distance were responsible but the audio? Awful. You can hear what's being said but the delays often reminded us of the early days of I.M.-ing in a chat using a microphone. Remember those days? "I'm sorry, go ahead." That was probably the signature phrase of that period online because you'd be speaking and not know the other person was in the middle of a sentence at the same time due to the delay. It wasn't as bad as that but it certainly reminded us of that.
The NASA scientist handling communications would frequently have to stop such as during, "Hey, guys, also -- Go ahead, Chris."
Or elsewhere when the astronauts weren't sure NASA's Mike had heard them and he informed them, "Stand by. We copy the question. We've got to talk." "Okay," Mashburn replied, "I didn't hear that last part."
While it could be problematic, it also allowed what struck us as a smart remark during a frustrated period. (To be clear, we enjoyed the smart remark.)
Cassidy: Yeah, I trust your life with it, Mike.
Mike: What was that?
Cassidy: I said it's good.
Marshburn quickly added, " That was Chris saying he was feeling good. But I feel good too."
Those are images of the astronauts and they are crisp but can you tell the difference above and in the photo below?
That's much easier to see. What's going on?
You've got more light.
How? In the less clear photos above the sharp one, the station was over the equator. The NASA narrator (not Mike) explained at one points the station was now "over the south Pacific [Ocean] and they wait for it to cross over to California so that they will be in daylight and better able to see." The photo immediately above is from when they were over California.
To give you an example of how quickly the station passes over the earth, in less than 20 minutes, the station went from being over California to being over Minnesota.
NASA's narrator explained that the station was moving at five miles a second.
When they were over California, Chris Cassidy declared, "For what it's worth, Mike, I can definitely tell a difference in temperatures out here than in that night pass."
Being in space and moving so quickly was a danger all by itself. But Marshburn and Cassidy also had to worry about making it to the leak without hitting electronics or hardware as they traveled along the side of the space station.
Why does ammonia matter? The NASA narrator explained that it "is the coolant that provides the proper cooling" for inside the station which carries electronics that put off a great deal of heat.
The space walk did not result in finding it, "P6 trust work site, no smoking guns or signs of drips," they informed NASA. The astronauts replaced a pump hoping that was where the leak was.
There were other problems during the space walk as well.
For example, they tried to grab photos for NASA during the times when they were over the Pacific Coast because the flash was not working properly. Another camera problem they experienced was how quickly the camera burned through batteries.
Again, no Home Depot, no Lowe's up there. Any repairs have to be made with what's available. The space walk isn't your basic home repair in terms of equipment or safety.
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Note: We wish we knew the last name of "Mike" or the last name of "Jackie." She was the woman in the NASA Control Room the narrator said was over choreography the space walk.