CLEVELAND — Early this morning, a SpaceX flight launched carrying small but significant pieces of Northeast Ohio—monitoring technology that may help improve air quality aboard spacecraft.
Another rocket, packed with supplies needed at the International Space Station, is now en route after taking off at 4:15 a.m. Tuesday.
“They're taking things like cargo, clothes for the crew, you know, other necessities,” said Jimi Russell, Public Affairs Officer with NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.
But on board this rocket is more than just supplies—there’s a piece of Northeast Ohio research. NASA Glenn’s Claire Fortenberry, a research aerospace engineer, has been working on commercially available air quality monitors tested specifically for use aboard spacecraft.
“We need to have monitoring technologies, especially as we start to think about missions that are going to be longer duration, missions where you know, maybe they're going to have less ability to rely on Earth,” said Fortenberry.
NASA sent up three commercial devices to test aboard that’ll monitor what's in the air, measuring both the quality and the size of particles. They’re also testing that equipment here on Earth, using vacuum dust collected from the space station and lunar dust.
“There’s, I would say, clothing fibers, skin cells, hair, yes. So there's a lot of bigger stuff in there,” Fortenberry explained.
For the past 25 years, NASA has maintained a continuous human presence in space, conducting more than 4,000 experiments like this one, many critical to crew safety. The goal is the make sure future space missions have air filtration systems that are functioning properly.
“As we plan to go to the moon, where dust is going to become an issue,” Fortenberry continued, “imagine breathing in small shards of glass. So that's, you know, obviously very much a concern for health for the crew, but also for hardware.”
It’s all part of a long-term goal: not just surviving in space, but one day, thriving on Mars.
“One day that's going to be people going to moon one day that's going to be people going to mars one day that's going to be people going to commercial space stations, not just the international space station, but commercial space stations, living and working in space to benefit humanity, to benefit our future as a species,” said Russel.
After about a month, they will receive data from the monitors every two weeks, and Claire and the research team will begin receiving data. The devices will remain in space for about seven months before returning to Earth, so NASA can find out if they worked.
