The shuttle program may have ended in July, but NASA still maintains a crew of astronauts aboard the International Space Station, where they work on cutting-edge technologies like humanoid robots and how spacecrafts can perform autonomous refueling.
But they also spend a lot of time on decidedly consumer-edge tech. For crew staying on the ISS for six months at a time, gadgets like tablets and smartphones can make this remote outpost feel more homey and comfortable. "Everyone wants the next newest camera to be brought up," self-funded space tourist Richard Garriott told Wired. He said the everyone on the ISS wanted to play with the Nikon D3X he took there in October of 2008.
Back in June, NASA sent a pair of iPhone 4s up into orbit on the shuttle’s last trip to the ISS to conduct experiments with some purpose-built apps. Notebook computers and even iPods have made the leap into orbit. And tablets should also be heading up in the near future.
This is all about a lot more than simply playing *Angry Birds Space *in space.
"We’re attempting to show how a commercial product that millions of people use can function as spaceflight hardware," Brian Rishikof, CEO of Odyssey Space Research, said in June 2011. His company designed a piece of iPhone software called SpaceLab that was used on the iPhones sent up into orbit on the space shuttle’s final mission last summer. The goal was to see if these $500 devices could replace machines that cost 10 or 100 times as much.
“When we approached NASA with the idea, it was novel. They weren’t sure,” Rishikof told Wired. “Eventually we got them to cooperate very well, but it took awhile to convince people that these devices had capabilities worth considering. One of the important metrics of flying in space is the mass, and these things are so light and so powerful. Computationally, it’s probably one of the best performance-based computers out there.”
Because of the low mass, if iPhones and iPads were substituted for larger, NASA-designed computer systems, NASA could save on development time and money (rocket fuel ain’t cheap, you know). Astronauts also get the benefits of an intuitive, well-designed user interface and more modern technology, versus the computers the astronauts now use, which are generally five to 10 years behind the latest consumer tech.
“For a computer designed specifically for use on board the space station, odds are very good it’s not going to be as robust, user friendly, powerful, or convenient as an off-the-shelf piece of technology,” Garriott said.
But before they can be approved for space travel, gadgets have to go through a rigorous, generally two-year-long certification process to make sure they’re appropriate for use on board the ISS. When Garriott was preparing for his trip, he wanted to bring his iPod aboard. In order to get it approved, he would have had remove the internal battery, leave it on earth, wire the device to an external battery pack, and wire that back into the iPod to power it. He left the iPod at home.
“The biggest thing [with getting consumer tech certified for flight] is safety issues," said Bruce Yost, NASA Small Spacecraft Technology Program manager. "For instance the batteries have to be of a certain type so they don’t explode or leak." Another issue is determining if a product emits any noxious gases. In the home or office, a plastic product treated with a solvent may give off some fumes that get diluted in the air to safe levels. “The reason why there is a sign-off process is that once you’re in orbit, you’re in an extremely closed ecosystem,” Garriott said. The livable area of the space station is about the size of a five-bedroom house, and air gets recycled. The space station’s systems may not be able to successfully cleanse certain chemicals out of the air supply.
Another danger is durability, particularly with glass items, which could turn into shrapnel if broken. “If you took up a bunch of test tubes and break them, now you’ve got hundreds of zero-g shards of glass to keep track of,” Garriott said. Due to the high velocity air ventilation systems on the station (necessary to keep astronauts from asphyxiating by breathing just a small pocket of air in front of them), Garriott notes this could largely be an antiquated safety issue, as things like crumbs are quickly swept away into air filters. But sharp edges are another glass-related concern of products brought into zero gravity.
Electrical compatibility is another concern. “The ISS does not have 110V AC nor 220V AC volt outlets that we are familiar with. Instead they have 24V DC and 100V DC outlets,” Garriott explained. “Thus all consumer electronics need to be both approved individually, then also an adapter built and tested to fly with them as well. This is a major impediment in my mind to casual use of consumer electronics aboard the ISS.” Electronic gadgets also must not interfere with existing electronics on board.
Further slowing things down is the fact that, because the ISS is international, both the U.S. and Russian space programs must sign off on a new piece of technology before it’s brought on board.
But although consumer gadgets have a place in space, they are certainly not up to spec to take the place of mission critical electronics. Things like getting the thrusters operated or solar panels aligned are hardwired to be failsafe, with an Internet-connected laptop control built on top of that. "Consumer electronics are not built to the same level of standards," Garriott said. "They can't be in the backbone of the main operations in space. It would be too great a risk."
Instead, devices like the iPhone are used for tasks like tracking the orientation of the space station using its accelerometer and gyroscope, or used to capture imagery of the earth (paired with space station position) using its camera. Rishikof doesn't know the results of NASA's first iPhone in space yet. "We have to recover the calibration data, imagery, and all the other data through filters and things to see how it did," he said. But the photographs they have recovered thus far are "spectacular."
Garriott thinks the place where consumer devices have the most potential to have an immediate and notable impact is in the management of astronaut schedules, which are planned down five-minute increments. Scheduling and pin-point accuracy for timing (when to turn on thrusters, when to take a photo while zooming over the earth) are huge needs of astronauts, which is why, in the early days of space travel, one of the first consumer gadgets approved for space travel was a watch.
The Omega Speedmaster had to be tested not only for its performance accuracy inside the cabin but in outside conditions as well -- conditions that include temperatures ranging from -100 to 100 degrees Celsius -- and the ability to withstand acceleration, vibrations, shock and acoustic noise. Since getting flight certified for all manned space missions in 1965, the Omega Speedmaster has been worn outside spacesuits on space walks and on the moon, and saved the Apollo 13 mission from near disaster in 1970.
Nowadays, there's greater communication between the space station and the ground team, as well as digital means to manage the day's schedule, but there's serious room for improvement. Currently, if there's a change to the schedule, for example, the ground team has to readjust the astronaut's schedule and email up a new one, which must be printed out and carried around. "With a digital schedule on your iPhone, you can adjust your requests and calendar items," Garriott said. "Just that would be an enormous advantage to operating in space, where there's no sense of time and your schedule is so schockingly fluid."
In the near future, NASA will be sending tablets into space -- the iPad was recently flight certified, according to Rishikof. "It would be a lot easier to have a single tablet, a single screen, to take with you to do procedures and science experiments instead of having a big laptop with you," NASA astronaut Dan Burbank said in March 2012. Astronauts tend to strap things down to surfaces, including their own bodies, using Velcro in zero gravity. A 7-inch tablet like a Nexus 7 or iPad mini would seem an ideal size for strapping to the arm or thigh of a space suit.
"Crew time is one of the most premium things in space, it’s very expensive and hard to come by," Rishikof said. "Anything you can do to simplify a task and make it more intuitive and accessible are very attractive."
Sending consumer tech up into space may be the most effective and efficient way to do that. At the very least, we're looking forward to Instagrams from space.
