Topic: International Space Station

Julie Robinson explores what maintaining human life aboard the International Space Station teaches us about Earth. Space habitation requires engineered substitutes for the air, water, surfaces and living systems that our planet supplies. Long-duration occupation of the station has produced lessons about building and operating these life-support systems. The station is also an observing platform for the Earth system below. Robinson connects the engineering lessons of living in space with Earth observations, climate change, and ways that spaceflight can help communities understand environmental

Gravity is a constant in our lives. It provides an internalized reference to which all other perceptions are related. We can experimentally manipulate the relationship between physical gravity with other cues to the direction of “up” using virtual reality - with either HMDs or specially built tilting environments - to explore how gravity contributes to perceptual judgements. The effect of gravity can also be cancelled by running experiments on the International Space Station in low Earth orbit. Changing orientation relative to gravity - or even just perceived orientation – affects your percept

Gravity is a constant in our lives. It provides an internalized reference to which all other perceptions are related. We can experimentally manipulate the relationship between physical gravity with other cues to the direction of “up” using virtual reality - with either HMDs or specially built tilting environments - to explore how gravity contributes to perceptual judgements. The effect of gravity can also be cancelled by running experiments on the International Space Station in low Earth orbit. Changing orientation relative to gravity - or even just perceived orientation – affects your percept