You’ve probably had a grown-up tell you to eat your fruits and veggies and drink milk because they help you build strong bones and muscles. Astronaut Stephen Bowen must have gotten plenty of healthy foods while he was growing up because he was able to hold an 800-pound piece of equipment for half an hour on Monday. An astronaut on the space shuttle Discovery’s final voyage, Bowen was participating in a space walk on Monday when the robotic system shutdown.
The space station has a small platform on the end of a 58-foot robotic arm. This is used to carry astronauts where they need to go when they are spacewalking. After a couple of hours, a work station controlling the robot arm shut down and it took the operators about half an hour to get it working again. During this time Bowen was stuck in space holding the 5x4 ft broken cooling pump.
You might be thinking it is impossible for one man to lift something so heavy, but in space where the effects of gravity are much reduced, it is possible. To learn more about gravity on Earth vs. gravity on Space, check out this NASA video! Even though lifting 800 pounds in space is a lot easier than lifting it on Earth, you should still pay attention when somebody tells you to eat your fruits and veggies. Don’t we all want to grow up big and strong?
Learn more about gravity by visiting this great site!
No comments:
Post a Comment