From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible.
On episode 372, NASA experts discuss launching and returning cargo to the International Space Station and the planning that goes into delivering several months worth of supplies and crucial science to astronauts in space. This episode was recorded on February 3, 2025.
Transcript
Kenna Pell (Host)
Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center. Episode 372, Space Cargo. I’m Kenna Pell, and I’ll be your host today on this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers and astronauts, all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight and more. Think about it like a road trip. There are a lot of things you need to bring along with you for when you get to where you’re going, but you only have so much space to get everything to said destination. You feel like you’re testing your skills in a game of Tetris, and you can’t forget about the passengers too. Not to mention you might be bringing time sensitive items like food in a cooler for camping. While we can all relate to the spatial challenges of packing for a road trip. Now think about that same situation, but for resupplying the crew on the International Space Station, there are only a few launches a year, and you have to get everything the astronauts need to keep the research going and the station flying. There are hundreds of moving pieces when it comes to launching cargo to the International Space Station to deliver supplies and crucial science to space. Today, we’re lucky to have cargo Mission Manager Keri Baugher from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and payload processing manager Jennifer Wahlberg from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, to talk about the steps involved in getting things from Earth to orbit, starting with manifesting through launch and arrival and back. Let’s get started.
Kenna Pell
Jennifer and Keri, thanks for joining us on Houston. We have a podcast today. We’re going to cover the basics of cargo, how you work to get that cargo to Space Station, and what you all are tracking during the mission and in return. But first, let’s start with your path to your current role. So to you both, Jennifer and Keri, I guess over to Jennifer. Where are you from?
Jennifer Wahlberg
Hello, Kenna. I grew up in Indiana, and I went to school at Purdue University in West Lafayette, where I studied Industrial Engineering, and my plan at the time was to stay in the Midwest, but offers came in as I was getting ready to graduate, including one from Kennedy Space Center at NASA. And my part of my family had moved to the Central Florida area at the time, so I thought, Okay, I’ll go down and try this out for a while. And I ended up staying.
Kenna Pell
I love that. And so you’re there on the Space Coast. You went to Purdue. That’s super awesome. Did you apply for a position at Kennedy?
Jennifer Wahlberg
I did. I mean, NASA KSC was one of the many companies and organizations that came to interview students at Purdue. And so I did get a few offers from, you know, manufacturing companies stay in the Midwest. But like I said, working for NASA seemed like an interesting thing to do at the time, and so I chose that
Kenna Pell
I love it, and you’ve called the Space Coast home ever since. Did you? Did you have any interest in space as a kid living in the Midwest?
Jennifer Wahlberg
I would say I was very interested in flight. I don’t remember being, you know, particularly interested in space, although my father was interested in both. And so I was aware of it, probably more so than other the run of the mill kids in Indiana. And did follow the Space Shuttle Program, especially my senior year.
Kenna Pell
Very cool. And so you get the offer at Purdue, you get the offer to go to KSC and work there. What other roles did you maybe start with and had? And how did you get to your current one now?
Jennifer Wahlberg
when I first came on to NASA, I worked for the shuttle program, and I was assigned to a logistics organization where we were in charge of making sure that the spares and repairs were done for all the parts on the space shuttle I worked, in particular the landing systems, and so I got to spend a lot of time with wheels and tires and when they brought the drag shoots onto the shuttle. So I worked in that organization for several years, and then I had some colleagues who had shifted from shuttle, the vehicle, over to the cargo, the payloads that were flying inside the vehicle, and I saw that they were doing some pretty interesting stuff on that side of the space center. And so it’s been several years ago I shifted over to payloads, and have loved it and worked it for the majority of my career. Now, most of that has been focused on payloads and the experiments that fly to space, both for sortie flights and to the International Space Station.
Kenna Pell
Awesome. And what is your title now?
Jennifer Wahlberg
My title now is project manager in my office focusing on the utilization cargo.
Kenna Pell
And how do you describe I was talking to a co worker about this that was newer to supporting International Space Station communications. What would you how do you describe what utilization is?
Jennifer Wahlberg
Utilization is basically using the resources that are on the space station to conduct science across the spectrum and varying types of research.
Kenna Pell
Got it. That’s perfect, and I will relay that to my coworker. That was way better than what I said. So started at Purdue, came to KSC, started in shuttle, and then eventually, of course, with shuttle that was building space station, you evolved into working payloads for Space Station, and you’re still doing that. This is awesome. So that’s Jennifer Wahlberg. She’s over at Kennedy Space Center on Florida Space Coast, of course, where we do launch the cargo from. But let’s go over to Keri, who’s here at Johnson Space Center in Houston, to talk about her side of everything. And Keri, let’s start with, where are you from?
Keri Baugher
Hey, Kenneth. So I am born and raised in Alabama. I know the accent probably gives me away. And I went to school at UAH in Huntsville. I finished up at Athens state. I studied I couldn’t decide between engineering and healthcare when I first started, so I spent the majority of college as a MAE major mechanical and aerospace, and then I finished up with math and health science, with intentions to go into, potentially the doctor side of healthcare, but I got a job at a school, or while I was still in school, doing logistics for a large distribution center. And it really just, it kind of just opened up eyes to what I enjoyed. And so I finished school with my math degree, I started really working in logistics field. A friend of mine who worked at NASA, you know, knew my personality. Knew that I loved logistics. I loved, you know, kind of just that whole big picture and moving pieces and and finding the efficiency and all the complex things. So he was like, you’d be perfect for, you know, stowage at Marshall Space Flight Center that they had some openings. And so I put in for that, and I transitioned over to the stowage world of ISS spent a good number of years doing that, did a lot of the stowage planning for the on orbit stowage and and just really enjoyed that a lot, and then recently have transitioned over to to the vehicle side of things, and managing the vehicles as a cargo mission manager. So that’s sort of my, sort of my story.
Kenna Pell
I love it.so you started over at Marshall, and their big support to the International Space Station and especially science, and they have over there what we call the Payload Operations Integration Center, where it’s our backup MCC, our backup Mission Control Center, but also they support all the science investigations that take place up there. So super cool. You came from there, and now you’re over at Johnson, here in Houston. I did want to ask, did you have any interest in space as a kid?
Keri Baugher
You know, I think, I really think all kids are fascinated by space, really, at some point. And just because we live, you know, really close to the Space and Rocket Center here in Huntsville, you know, you drive past that, you know, every day you see the rocket, you know, it just sort of, kind of always is something that’s in the back of your mind of, you know, hey, I might, I might want to do something like that when I get older. So it was kind of always a dream. I didn’t really, you know, I didn’t really know the path to get there, or, you know, maybe expect to work at NASA because, you know, it’s kind of, it can be a little bit daunting. And think, I mean, you got to be, you know, just a you got to be a rocket scientist to work out there. But there are lots of different fields for every little niche. And so my niche is, like I said, logistics and efficiency and so, you know, packing the vehicles and integrating, you know, things to the space. Station that’s that’s kind of just a perfect fit for me. So I really, I really enjoy it.
Kenna Pell
Love it. Okay, well, a quick icebreaker question before we get into all of the cargo questions here. But what’s the weirdest, most interesting, or maybe most memorable item you’ve helped send to space?
Keri Baugher
I guess I’ll go first. That was, that’s a tough one. There’s, there’s a lot of a lot of fun, interesting, like, you know, just exciting things that we’ve sent over the years. I did a lot of work with the payloads community and Marshall, and so we’ve said a lot of stuff. But I think the most fun that really stood out to me was, was probably the slime experiment that we launched, it’s been a number of years back, but the crew had a really good time with that when it was fun to watch them execute those ops on orbit, and it was a little messy, but they seem to really enjoy it as well. So that one was a fun one
Jennifer Wahlberg
Yeah, for me, as Keri said, there’s so many different things that fly to space, and there are so many different interests, but one thing that stuck out to me was just a few years ago, flew on SpaceX 22 it was experiment with Bob Tail Squid, just little baby squids, and they were the scientist was looking at The stressors that they underwent in space, and liking it to what kind of microbes would help them deal better with the stress, trying to extrapolate that out to astronauts in future years.
Kenna Pell
So between squid and slime. You guys have the opportunity to send up really cool science that helps benefit all of humanity. Let’s go into our next session about a section about cargo and what is cargo. And you know, I already asked you to define exactly what utilization is, and I have another word that we’re gonna I’m gonna ask you to define here a little bit later, because that will start coming into play as well. But let’s start with the seemingly simple question, what is cargo and what types of items are we talking about? When we use this term,
Keri Baugher
I can go first so every vehicle, it has a unique cargo compliment that we take to station, so we can have anything from, you know, hygiene items, crew clothing, you know, food, you know, large ORU’s that they’re going to use to repair and upgrade, you know, all the systems that we have on ISS, you know, obviously we’re sending a lot of science experiments as well. There’s a huge variety of those, and all of their, you know, accessories and the cold stowage assets that are needed to take those up and keep those in a condition that they’re required to be in. So depending on the space available, you know, we might even sneak some treats for the crew in there, you know, like ice cream, and in the polars that are kind of our refrigerators or freezers on the way up and down. So just a huge variety of stuff. It’s kind of unique every mission.
Kenna Pell
so everything from hardware like giant solar arrays, personal items for the crew, food, and, of course, science, because there’s 1000s of researchers on the ground, and really the hands that are doing that science are the astronauts on board space station. So cargo is a big term, or a short term for a lot of things. Jennifer, I wanted to ask you, what vehicles take these items to the space station, and how much do you send on each mission?
Jennifer Wahlberg
There are several different vehicles that go to Space Station from several different companies. We have the SpaceX Dragon. There’s a cargo version and a crew version. There’s the Boeing Starliner, the new crew vehicle. There is the Northrop Grumman Cygnus module. And we’re coming online soon, hopefully, with the Sierra June chaser. And then JAXA has their HTV vehicle. So there’s so many different vehicles. They all have slightly different capabilities. But each vehicle, cargo vehicle is capable is of carrying, like, 1000s of kilograms to space, a lot of that’s pressurized. And we already mentioned, you know, hardware and supplies and exercise equipment for the crew and science, lots of science. And there’s also the unpressurized cargo, the items that are bigger, that plug into outside or unpressurized platforms on the station. Where they can view Earth. A lot of them are Earth observing, but some are looking to the stars to get gather more science throughout there. And those items come in from all over the United States, all over the world, from different organizations, different governments, different universities. They’re too many to list for sure.
Kenna Pell
And so I wanted to ask, you know, we work with Northrop Grumman and their Cygnus spacecraft, and then SpaceX with their Dragon spacecraft, what are the key differences between those? So one of them, for instance, comes back and you can return science, and then the other one you can use to dispose trash. Can you explain the differences in that
Keri Baugher
So the NG vehicle is our largest cargo vehicle, that it is also our only trash vehicle for return. So it goes up with cargo, and then we, you know, it sits on station for an extended period of time while we load it with all the trash that’s currently on station and that we generate while it’s sitting there. So it’s a really helpful vehicle to free up space on station and take down all the stuff we don’t need anymore. The SpaceX cargo Dragon, it carries a little bit less cargo on the way up, but it is also currently our only return vehicle to bring hardware home, and so it has a shorter mission duration. But it’s like I said, it takes up cargo and then we’re able to bring home, you know, the the science that’s completed, or, you know, or use that need to be refurbished, all those things come back down on a cargo Dragon, for the most part, the crewed vehicles, the crewed SpaceX Dragon, they have a very small cargo footprint, so there’s not a lot of cargo that you can launch a return on there. But we do bring some things up and down on that vehicle as well, but mainly that that vehicle is for the crew to take them to station and and bring them home.
Jennifer Wahlberg
So for the Crew Dragon, we do have a designated space for cargo. It is, like Keri said, significantly less, but we are able to send up very specific supplies that the crew uses, both in flight and some medications that transfer over for their stay on station. We also are able to send up and bring home two or three powered lockers that contain conditioned science and other equipment. And of course, we will usually send up some pieces of EVA equipment if one of the or two of the crew members will be planning on doing some EVAs while they’re on board.
Kenna Pell
Got it okay. And Jennifer, thanks. Like you said, researchers from around the world are sending all these items. And so next I want to talk about what we call manifesting. And that’s the the next term I was going to ask you, I warned you for an explanation on can either of you explain what the term manifesting means?
Jennifer Wahlberg
So manifesting is just the simple act of putting it on a flight, kind of like when you’re going to fly on an airplane, and they ask you, how many bags are you going to check? So checking the bags that is manifesting. But of course, a very complicated process. It’s a matter of everybody, the different organizations and the different international partners, saying we want to fly this hardware on this flight or on this particular time frame, and then the cargo Mission Manager office goes through and sees what will fit on the vehicle that they’re working, because a lot of times we have much more stuff that wants to go up or come home than we have room for. So then we have to get into priorities of when is this actually needed on board, ISS, how long is it going to be used, and when will it be ready to come home? Keri anything you can add to that?
Keri Baugher
No, I think that sounds good. The only other thing you know is just the specifics. So you know when they manifest it. You know, we need, you know, the dimensions, the packaging requirements, the weight, all that kind of matters. You know, for NG, you know, we’re very mass limited sometimes. And so, you know, we may only be able to fit certain things just due to the weight of the items themselves. You know, they add up. And so, you know, for SpaceX, it’s volume limited usually. And so we’re very much concerned with the dimensions of the hardware, or, you know, the packaging required, and how much bigger that’s going to make it those sort of things. Are very important, and all part of the manifesting process they’re supposed to provide to us when they they submit their stuff for launch.
Kenna Pell
Jennifer, I loved the analogy to checking your bags for a flight. In the intro of this, I talked about sort of like packing for a road trip, but much more challenging. There’s so many other challenges. And Keri, you mentioned weight, for example, I was working to send up some solar eclipse glasses for the crew to view the solar eclipse and take some photos with the glasses on orbit. And just something that small, even having to make sure or check the weight and the dimensions and all of that, so much goes into every single item, and that’s not even counting which ones we’ll talk about, Jennifer with late load items that need certain power requirements and temperatures and things like that. But Keri, here in Houston, I want to ask, how and where do you receive all these items that are being manifested?
Keri Baugher
So some of the cargo is received in different ways. So we have a lot of standard cargo that’s available and ready to be shipped to CMC here in Houston, so that they have time to, you know, weigh it, package it, and process it, and get it packed into cargo bags and then deliver it to the vehicle providers by certain dates. You know, some items are not ready until later on in the flow. Or, you know, maybe it’s science items that have constraints and they can’t be packed until just prior to launch. So those items are typically shipped straight to the launch sites and packed as late as the day before. There is, you know, a few special cases where we’ll hand carry. So the CMC group that travels to pack the bags at the launch site. They may, you know, take an item with them, if it’s smaller, and something of importance that maybe came in late and didn’t make the standard shipment, they’ll hand carry it with them. And that’s pretty much, pretty much, the various options that they have.
Kenna Pell
Okay, and so Jennifer and
Jennifer Wahlberg
I would add to that, if you’ll, you’ll let me. So there are certain items that are processed here at Kennedy Space Center that live and are, like I said, are filled here or whatever. So they don’t go through Houston, but they meet the cargo packing providers here at KSC, and then go to the vehicle directly from KFC.
Kenna Pell
Got it okay. And Keri had mentioned what we call late load items that are time sensitive, power sensitive, temperature sensitive, items that need to be loaded on later or closer to launch. Jennifer, I wanted to ask, what is the Space Systems processing facility and what kind of cargo is processed there also, what facilities do you have available for all the science and researchers for their late load payloads?
Jennifer Wahlberg
The SSPF Space Systems processing facility, as you mentioned, is our main facility here on Kennedy Space Center, focused on ISS we have a large high bay processing area, a clean work area where some of the larger elements ORU’s or payloads are processed. We also have small labs that range from 300 to maybe 500 square feet that we invite those late load science processing folks to come in. Basically, it’s a home away from home for the scientists to prepare those time critical science items and turn them over for final packing into the vehicle. Our customers range from the large processing modules the NG Cygnus has been processing here at KSC in our SSPF high bay for the last couple of flights, all the way down to the little capsules and cube sets that fly pressurized. The SSPF is also home to much of the plant research conducted on the station so that’s with the purpose of advancing some space based agriculture and supporting future long duration missions. For example the plant research team has helped the orbiting lab crews grow lettuce, and tomatoes, and chili peppers and more. So that’s fun
Kenna Pell
Keri, I think you mentioned the non time critical items, and when, again, do you load those into the spacecraft?
Keri Baugher
So it just depends, you know, depending on the vehicle, you know, we’ll start loading stuff, you know, several weeks before launch. And then, you know, we’ve got several different loads that’ll go in at different times, if that makes sense. So you’ll have, you know, like, an earlier time frame load, where they’ll start loading, you know, the basement, or, you know, earlier areas of the vehicle. And then you know, you’ll do another shipment, and there will be other other items that are loaded. And then you’ll have the late load items that are loaded right before launch. So it’s, it’s several week process that’s actively ongoing. Jennifer, do you have any more specific it’s kind of, it’s kind of varies between the vehicles. So I hate to say a specific number, because it’s different for each vehicle, but several weeks is,
Jennifer Wahlberg
yeah, you’re right. So some of the unpressurized payloads, they’ll get installed in the vehicles. Probably right about one month prior to launch, and the L minus 30 days. And as Keri said, the first cargo loads will go in, we’ll say around L minus three to four weeks, and then they’ll be in the next stage, where the vehicle has to go through more steps of processing before they’re ready for the next load of cargo, and maybe the L minus seven to 10 day time period, and then a little bit more processing and getting out to the pad until we load the final cargo right around L minus 24 hours.
Kenna Pell
Got it okay. And so when you say unpressurized like, say, we’re talking about SpaceX Dragon, and that would be the trunk portion, and that way we can store big items in there, like solar array upgrades with irosa. I know sometimes we have big research payloads other like NASA payloads, like codecs and things like that. So thank you for explaining both the unpressurized and pressurized part of that, and I didn’t realize it would, you know, L minus a couple of weeks in advance of the launch. So that’s super cool. I wanted to talk Jennifer about late load team, and you said, sometimes around the 24 hour mark, can you walk us through what that looks like,
Jennifer Wahlberg
sure our team here does, we have a team that hosts labs, so they’re going to be in touch with the scientists payload providers months before arriving here, and then we they will have The lab set up with the equipment they need and assigned. You know, this project is going to process in this lab, and then this project is going to have two or three labs down the hall, and they’ll be all set up. So when the scientists arrive, they come in and they start doing their science things in lab. Meanwhile, the locker owners, for example, the polars, the pressure, the condition science assets, are preparing their lockers in order to receive the science and load them. So our team is hosting all these visitors and planning ahead with the vehicle provider. Okay, you want us to deliver the cargo to your to the pad at the vehicle, or to the vehicle at the pad at almost 24 hours, and our team is working toward making sure we have the right people involved. We have the right badging in place, and then we talk through the timeline down to, you know, five minute intervals to make sure we’re we’ve got everything lined up and ready to go so that we can work through any pickups that might come through at the very last time, so we don’t impact the launch time.
Kenna Pell
Jennifer, you reminded me when you said lockers. Keri, I was going to ask, do you have certain size bags that you store some of those non time critical items in? Are they all different sizes depending on the vehicle, or are they mostly kind of standard and maybe go by weight or so? Sorry, I really don’t know how to explain that well, but maybe you can
Keri Baugher
No, no, I understand. So every vehicle has what we call standard cargo bags that they have agreed to launch or fit onto their vehicle. And so, you know, there’s a variety of different sizes. You know, there’s there’s large bags, you know, 10.0’s, 8.0’s, 6.0’s, 4.0’s and each vehicle, you know, has a different compliment that they’ve agreed or that they are capable of carrying. Most of the non critical items go in, you know, those larger bags in the earlier loads. We also have some 1.0’s and halves that are that are smaller for non critical items. And critical items a lot we haven’t, you know, a lot of of those smaller bags in the the early destow area of the vehicle that’s accessible right away. So we do still have a lot of the critical items in there. It’s not just conditioned stowage, they also have some of those in the passive bag. So good variety of bags on each vehicle, and each vehicle can carry, you know, a different number, so just depends on the vehicle that you’re sending.
Kenna Pell
Got it. Okay, Well, I want to ask you both this question. Keri, back to you, how do you prepare for the unexpected? And do you ever run into any last minute changes?
Keri Baugher
Yeah, so last minute changes and challenges are just it is? It is very common. You know, you often have cargo that has to be removed from the flight. You know, it doesn’t. Maybe it didn’t, you know, didn’t test as well as they had planned. Or, you know, maybe they have issues, you know, during production, so they have to be pulled from the flight. We have a lot of, you know, oftentimes science very late in the flow, you know, maybe even while we’re at the launch site, you know, you know, it it comes in or or maybe it doesn’t arrive. You know, the science is unable to be shipped to. Due to various issues that they’ve had. And so we have to backfill that space because, you know, we need, we need full bags, and we also need to make sure that the mass of the bag stays very close to what we advertise that it would be to the vehicle provider. So we always come ready to the launch site with what we call filler items, you know. And usually that’s crew provisions, you know, wipes, you know, towels, you know, food is always a good filler. So we always bring stuff like that and have it handy just in case there’s unexpected voids or space that we need to fill for the mission. I will also say that, you know, oftentimes there’s something that breaks on orbit, or, you know, something happens that was not expected. And you could be asked to, you know, re plan your manifest, you know, just before launch even. And so we always had to be prepared for that. And, you know, what can be removed if we needed to make space right away. So we always kind of carry that running list in our minds of of what we would do if, if something needed to be removed or added, to stay prepared.
Kenna Pell
I did not know that about the filler items, which makes total sense, just to maximize the space, and no pun intended, but the space inside the spacecraft, because it’s no it’s not like a grocery run, right? I mean, it is, essentially, but it’s not like your everyday you can just go up to the grocery store. How many times a year do you all send up these cargo missions? Is it two to three, three to four kind of depends.
Keri Baugher
I think it really depends. And Jennifer, correct me, if I’m wrong, I think, you know, typically, we shoot for, you know, three to four per year. It used to be less in previous years, but, you know, the last couple of years, there have been at least three to four cargo missions every year.
Kenna Pell
You all keep really busy, and there’s so many different people involved in each of these missions. To have three to four years is a lot. I did want to go over back to you, Jennifer, and ask the same question, how do you prepare for the unexpected and then running into last minute changes? How do you handle that?
Jennifer Wahlberg
Well, we try, in the best of our abilities to plan for the worst and hope for the best. I mean, many of us have done late load processing many times over, so we have an idea of how the flow is going to go, but then we’re always aware that things happen and we have to adjust the timeline, or we have to pull in a different resource that we weren’t expected. So it’s all in the planning and knowing who to call. We always have, you know, a list of people, experts, you know, in back rooms or across the country, saying, Hey, we ran into a problem with this. What can we do about it? Do we need to repair it or replace it? And sometimes it’s just the time we’re dealing with okay, we ran in into a delay in getting the cargo ready, so we talked to the vehicle provider about, hey, can we delay this, but bring you this other thing instead and get back on track? So it’s very dynamic, but we have a lot of good people working, and it definitely takes a team a lot of people involved to pull everything together.
Kenna Pell
Dynamic is a great word that we use a lot around here. And I did want to ask Jennifer one question that I just thought of, but with late load and, you know, expecting or preparing for the unexpected, say, a launch scrubs and you need to bring the payload back into a lab. How often does that happen? Or do a lot of times, once you put that late load item onto the spacecraft. Does it have a, you know, a couple of days, or does it really just depend on what that research item is?
Jennifer Wahlberg
It does depend a lot on what the research item is, and then what kind of condition it’s in. If it’s a frozen item, then that’s probably going to be able to stay packed for a longer period of time. But if it’s something that’s refrigerated, it may only have 48 hours or 72 hours that it can sit on the pad before we need to change it out, because then the timing is such that once it gets to station and they start the experiment on it, then the samples will have passed their prime time. So we, the the we, as in the larger NASA teams, and the payload teams plan for those and so a lot of them will come to the processing side the launch site with several sets of samples, two or three sets of samples. They’ll have a prime set that’s packed first. And then if we get into an extended launch delay, saying “We haven’t launched in a couple three days”, then there are certain items of that late load complement, of the payloads that we will bring back to the SSPF, we will unpack those items, hand them back to the scientist and. They will swap out what they need to do, or refresh what they need to do, give them back to the packing integrators, then we’ll take them back to the vehicle, and that usually has to happen in a 24 hour period of time. So it’s a quick turnaround. But again, we put those schedules in place so everybody understands up front, if a scrub is called, then you’re going to get your science back in your hands at approximately this time, and you need to give it back to us to get it back to the vehicle within this period of time so that we can start all over again.
Kenna Pell
Got it okay? So timing really is everything with having to refresh items if there is a launch delay, and then something I never thought of was having those spares too.
Jennifer Wahlberg
Yeah, and sometimes payload providers don’t have a backup set of samples, and so they have to come in to launch and declare upfront to the science organization, the research organization, that allows them to fly. So hey, if we don’t launch by this particular time, or if we don’t get started on our experiment by this particular time, there may or will be a loss of science. And so when they get manifested. They are asked to quantify about what percentage of science might be lost if we can’t get this delivered in a nominal timeframe.
Kenna Pell
Got it okay, and before we close out this section, I did want to ask if there’s a layperson way to explain bridge the relationship between Keri, your team here at JSC, Johnson here in Houston, and then Jennifer, your team over at the launch site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. So how would you explain that? Is it, you know, a lot of the manifestation and planning comes from JSC, and then, you know, the action with the packing and liftoff over at Kennedy. Is there, is there anything I’m missing in between, or is it really, you guys are both doing everything?
Keri Baugher
yeah, I think we’re both heavily involved in all of it from beginning to end. But I will say that, you know, on the JSC side of things, you know, we are typically super heavily involved in the manifesting and the integration into the cargo bags and the delivery of those bags to KSC. And of course, we’re still involved in the loading of the vehicle, but I feel like the KSC side of things is, is is very strong and very heavy in the integration of the bags into the vehicle and that late load science, and, you know, providing them with the facilities that they need to get that final packing of those, those critical items, ready and loaded onto the vehicle. I think the KSC side is also super involved in the unpressurized which happens in an earlier time frame. So Jennifer, you you work at the KSC side more than I do, but that, just from my perspective, that’s kind of the simple way to look at it, is we do the integration into the bags and send it over there. And they are very heavily involved in the the integration into the vehicle and the in the ops that it takes for the light load cargo.
Jennifer Wahlberg
I would agree with that assessment. That’s pretty good. JSC focuses on the details of what’s in the bags and when it’s needed, and when it comes to KSC, other than the items that we are helping to process to put into those bags too. We are more moving the packed bags itself and communicating and coordinating with the vehicles to get them moved to the right place at the right time.
Kenna Pell
Perfect. Okay, let’s transition to post launch, after liftoff during the mission, once it arrives to the space station and its return. The first question that I had was, what do you all track while in mission? So Keri, once everything lifts off and it arrives to the space station, do your research portfolio managers, which is almost like the project manager for one investigation, when I say investigation, one science research payload, essentially, do you pass that off to the research portfolio manager, or are you still tracking it once it gets to the space station?
Keri Baugher
So we are still super involved, you know, the the research managers, they are, they’re involved in, like the manifest side of the house, you know, and just the overall, I think paperwork trail for the most part. You know, the the PD’s, the actual payload developers, are heavily involved in the own orbit side of the house. For us, we are, you know, we’re still involved to ensure that all the mission, you know, items for the mission are executed as planned, because we, you know, for the the returning flights, you know, we need to make sure that these items are still going to be able to be packed, and that, you know, our plan that we have for return is still valid. We see a lot of churn, you know, during cargo ops with, you know, items not being found, or additional items being found that need to return. You know, items not fitting like they should. So, you know, these issues are all, you know, a lot of the time sensitive. And you know, we need an alternate plan, or, you know, a quick decision from from the CMM to to keep their cargo ops running smoothly, to make sure the vehicle loading stays on track. Because ultimately, you know, they’ll come to us. You know, I say, We’ll to to see, you know what, what we want to do if maybe an item doesn’t fit in the cushion. Do you know, is it okay to remove the cushion? You know, this item doesn’t fit in this bag with an alternate bag that they can put that in. And so that’s kind of our job, to make sure that we provide them with those answers, to keep the vehicle ops, you know, going, you know, in a timely fashion, and that the crew is not waiting on that sort of thing, so..
Kenna Pell
When you say CMM, you’re saying, is that cargo Mission Manager?
Keri Baugher
That is correct? Yes.
Kenna Pell
Okay, so, if you’re the cargo Mission Manager, are you really cradle to grave, the whole point, even on return to supporting that,
Keri Baugher
yes, correct for, you know, the SpaceX cargo Dragon, you know, it’s, it’s up and down. So if, if we’re the CMM for that vehicle, we are carrying it all the way up and all the way back home to, you know, until everything is is back as planned, typically, we’ll have a different CMM for launch than we do for return, just because there’s, there’s so much that goes into both and it’s happening at the same time. But yes, our team works both sides of that.
Kenna Pell
Got it okay? And then Jennifer, I wanted to ask you, when it comes to your items, so say, an orbital replacement unit or an ORU, like you mentioned, does your team track that down at KSC, or is that with Keri as the cargo mission manager?
Jennifer Wahlberg
So for the most part, we’re watching and waiting for the cargo mission managers to tell us that something’s coming home, and so we will be ready to receive it once it is back home and unpacked, and we will be ready to move things again where it needs to get to,
Kenna Pell
Okay, And then upon that return, you guys are working together once again, because once it splashes down, there’s a team who goes and gathers all the science, especially that time critical science, and brings it back to the Space Systems processing facility, or the SSPF down at Kennedy, I wanted to ask Keri or Jennifer, what types of cargo are returned, and how do the teams help the astronauts on station prepare for these items to be returned.
Jennifer Wahlberg
the types of things that returned definitely include the science items that you know they want to get back and be processed and identified or checked through before that gravity equivalent has time to set in. Some of the items are samples on from orbit, like, how is the water system handling? So they’ll send back microbial samples or water samples to be analyzed to make sure everything’s still good on station. Some things like Keri mentioned before, are items that have broken and need to come back home to be repaired, refurbished and sent back again. So we have lots of things, but the a lot of things that we focus on here at Kennedy are getting the time critical science back, back on the ground, unpacked back into the hands of the scientists, or at least put in another method of stasis to maintain the science gained on, on ISS’s microgravity, until they can get back to their home lab and get into more intricate analysis.
Keri Baugher
You know, we return, like Jen said, a lot of the ORU’s that need to be refurbished and relaunched on a later flight. The crew, you know, return some of their personal items that that are no longer needed on orbit. We have a lot of science that’s been executed that’s ready to be returned to the research teams you know. A lot of that you know can be anything from you know. You know, it could be the the ambient blood or frozen blood, or, you know, just different things that have, that have been collected while they’re up there. A lot of the experiments that have been operated and are successful and they’re ready to to be returned to the labs on Earth to further the research. So the crew is, is provided instructions to pack all that up. You know, they load the bag onto the vehicle. You know, they’re given vehicle locations along with, you know how the bag should be oriented, and additional steps for, you know how to install the strapping and things like that to make sure that it’s safely returned.
Kenna Pell
Is there anything, Keri, unique about packing cargo for return versus launch.
Keri Baugher
I would say that packing for return is, is unique, just because, you know, the items may not be in the config that you expect them to be. You know, may have been up there a while, or, you know, maybe, maybe it’s, it’s gone through some some operations on orbit. So, you know, the team that manifested it may not, may not realize that it’s in a different assembly than it than it was when it initially launched. So, you know, it may not fit in the bag as you think it should based on the information that you have. It takes a lot of back and forth. You know, often the crew will have to take pictures just to help us understand, you know, what is the issue? Why won’t this fit? You know, just, just to get to the bottom of what the actual issue is. So then you can go work it. And then you need, you know, the additional time to work the alternate plan there’s, there’s also usually some challenges with the comm and just making sure that that you have provided them clear steps on, on how to, you know, pack something into the bag, and via the instructions that the the the PD has provided to your to you, it’s, it’s very easy to to interpret steps differently, and so, you know, you spend a lot of time on wording and word smithing and making sure that, you know, steps are very clear and they’re not open to interpretation. Basically, you’re just, you’re building a very intricate plan for someone else to execute. So that’s, that’s always challenging.
Kenna Pell
Yeah, okay. And I want to go back to just the question before this was Jennifer and talking about returning science back to those labs. And I like how full circle it all is. You know, you start with the late load items, the time critical items in the labs, and then upon return, you bring them back. But sometimes different experiments may stay up there for longer duration. So, Jennifer, do you have to plan, maybe a completely different plan for use of the labs based on return, because some items may have launched on earlier flights in the year?
Jennifer Wahlberg
Yes, that’s correct. I mean, our launch complement of labs, you know, the labs we’re preparing for all the science that is launching, that usually changes for the return complement on these dragon missions coming down, you know, 30 days later or so, some of the items may go up and come back down, but a good many of them do change. And so our team works. As soon as the launch science is cleared out, they’ll exit that lab, and they’ll clear out and clean up what was there from the previous team processes and in it and reconfigure it and set it up for the return scientists coming back.
Kenna Pell
I want to ask, How does it feel watching the science and researchers getting to see their launch and their work that maybe has taken many, many years to get together and manifested and on the rocket and actually lifting off? What is it? What’s that experience like watching the science and researchers, the scientists and researchers
Jennifer Wahlberg
I’ll say it’s pretty it’s exciting and it’s humbling too. You know, for a person who has worked so many of these missions and seen so so many of the same things are but different come through over time. You know, if, if I didn’t stop to to look at what was going on around me, I’ll I could think, Oh, this is just another mission, but when we get a chance to interact with these folks coming through and just be reminded that this is what they afford half their career into it puts a level of excitement and an honor and be able to help these folks enable them to do what they’re doing. So it really is exciting, and then we watched the launch and just applaud them and wish them well and hope for good results. Great results.
Keri Baugher
It’s really neat. You know, it’s very easy to get bogged down in the stress of the mission, and you work it for several months, and there’s just always so many challenges and issues, and it’s very easy to get stressed out and think of the negatives. But as soon as you, you know, see the bags getting loaded onto the vehicle, and, you know, you talk to some of the PDS who are just, they’re so excited, you know, they maybe it’s their whole life work that they’ve been working on, and this is kind of the moment they’ve been waiting for, like, forever. And so they are just, they’re super excited. And so you can’t not wish them the best and hope that everything works out, and do everything you can do to make sure that it returns, you know, safely in the configuration that they asked for it to be in. So kind of just, it’s a little more wind in your sails, you know, they’re towards, towards to get you through to the end of the mission, because you kind of have something to to strive for, it gives you, it gives you kind of a face with the mission, if you will, makes it worthwhile.
Kenna Pell
I love that humbling, worthwhile, really, really nice. And to see those scientists get to see their, like you said, careers work, lifting off, heading to the space station. Well, Jennifer and Keri, I think we’re almost out of time. I know you both are super busy working current manifests now that everyone on this podcast knows what we mean by manifest. Thank you so much for joining us today to talk about how cargo is sent from Earth to the International Space Station.
Kenna Pell
Thanks for sticking around. I hope you learned something new today. Check nasa.gov for the latest news and to find out more about cargo launches, you can check out nasa.gov/commercialresupply. You can find all our episodes at nasa.gov/podcasts. and we’re on social media as Johnson Space Center on Facebook, X and Instagram. To learn more about the science on or heading to Space Station, check our ISS_research on x and ISS on Instagram. Use #AskNASA on your favorite platform to submit your idea and make sure to mention it’s for Houston We have a podcast. This episode was recorded on February 3, 2025 thanks to the Houston we have a podcast team. Will Flato, Daniel Tohill, Dane Turner, Courtney Beasley and Dominique Crespo. I’d like to give a special thanks to Nicole rose and Jenny Hamilton from the International Space Station program’s research communications team for helping to craft this conversation and the great questions that came with it. And of course, thanks again to Jennifer Wahlberg and Keri Baugher for taking the time to come on the show. Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on, and tell us what you think of our podcast. We’ll be back next week.
