Space archaeology research: Life & tradition on the International Space Station

In a fantastic research, space archaeologists are reconstructing life on the International Space Station (ISS) over the previous 20 years, to higher perceive space tradition and get an inside take a look at how astronauts work together with their instruments and colleagues when above Earth.

The capacity to know the ‘microsociety’ of crews onboard the ISS will provide a window into how life in space features, as people contemplate interplanetary exploration. So how is that this gravity defying analysis made attainable?

Internationally acknowledged space archaeologist, Associate Professor Alice Gorman at Flinders University, says ISS researchers will not have the ability to journey to the space station themselves, as an alternative opting to make use of hundreds of thousands of pictures taken onboard over practically 20 years, to doc developments and adjustments throughout the station’s life-style and cultural make-up.

“Fortunately for us, the first occupation of the ISS coincided with the emergence of digital photography,” says Associate Professor Gorman.

“The images include metadata recording the time and date, which become an excavation, linking the contents of images to moments in time. Given that the crew takes approximately 400 photographs per day, images depicting the station interior now number in the millions.”

“We’ll eventually use crowdsourcing to help tag and catalog that huge cache of photos, with the project likely to take several years.”

However, the researchers can even have the ability to get onboard with the assistance of astronauts conducting archaeological surveys of the ISS inside, to doc points of life that may’t be derived from image analysis alone.

“One potential survey is surface sampling for the build-up of dust, hair, skin cells, oil, dirt, food, broken fragments of equipment and other materials,” says Associate Professor Justin Walsh of Chapman University in California, a co-investigator on the mission.

“An aerosol sampling experiment, which collects air and particulates on the station, offers precious baseline knowledge.

“Other techniques include audio recording to identify levels of ambient sound and documentation of specific public spaces, such as eating areas, and, if possible, private spaces such as crew berths.”

“Understanding how individuals and groups use material culture in space stations, from discrete objects to contextual relationships, promises to reveal intersections of identity, nationality and community.”

Research strategies will deal with:

• Image evaluation: utilizing machine studying to catalog affiliation between crew members, areas throughout the station and objects/instruments.
• Interviews and anonymised questionnaires with flight and floor crews.
• The growth of procedures for the ISS crew to carry out archaeological surveys on web site.
• The investigation of ISS cargo return (‘de-integration’) exercise and evaluation of the values and meanings related to returned objects.
• The investigation and attainable excavation of archaeological websites on Earth associated to the event, deployment and discard of expertise and assets consumed by the crew.

Associate Professor Gorman says an usually ignored however vital element of operations on the ISS is the return of things to Earth.

“The return of items from the ISS can be interpreted archaeologically as a form of discard process. Preliminary analysis of our interview transcripts indicates the complexity of the process whereby items enter the inventory and are subsequently dispersed.”

“If items associated with the ISS have been discarded on Earth in soil matrices, traditional archaeological excavation techniques could be used to retrieve and analyze them.”