Discovery News: Space Diary

A Passover in Space

As Jews around the world prepare for Passover, the festival of freedom, one adventurous soul is experiencing emancipation in a most literal fashion.

In his new abode aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, a 40-year-old mechanical engineer from Parsippany, New Jersey, has slipped the bonds of gravity and does not intend to return to Earth’s shackles until sometime in June. He is the first Jewish astronaut to live on the orbital outpost, a multi-national complex that has been under construction for the past 10 years.

Living in weightlessness requires adaptation. There will be no matzos in orbit, for example, because the flyaway crumbs would be uncontainable. Shortly before Reisman launched aboard the shuttle Endeavour on March 11, I asked him about the prospect of a Passover in space.

“I haven’t really thought that much about that,” he replied. What Reisman did spend some time planning was how to honor Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who died in the 2003 shuttle Columbia disaster.

After the accident, Reisman was given a choice to help with the investigation or provide emotional support to Ramon’s family. He chose the latter. “It was so incredibly tragic,” Reisman told The Jerusalem Post during a visit to Israel. “Ilan had a great sense of humor and worked very hard to represent not only Israel but every Jew in the world.”

Later, when he was tapped for a space mission of his own, Reisman asked Ramon’s widow Rona if there was anything he could fly for her.

“I’m taking a couple of things,” Reisman told me in a preflight interview. “Ilan flew a copy of the Israeli declaration of independence. It was scroll and he kind of played with it in orbit and they have video of that. She gave me another copy so I can kind of have the same experience with it up on orbit and then I intend to return it to her when I get back.”

Reisman also is flying a cloth with the symbol of the state of Israel that has been signed by Pres. Shimon Peres, a necklace blessed by a Buddhist priest and a set of rosary beads. “I pretty much have all my major religions covered,” he joked.

Reisman’s Passover in space will be spent getting to know two new crewmates, Sergey Volkov and Oleg Kononenko. The cosmonauts replace the current space station commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko, who depart the station on April 19, the first night of Passover.

Fortunately for Reisman, his Russian is stronger than his Hebrew -- he made it through cosmonaut training without a translator and took his exams in Russian as well. But his Jewish heritage comes through as well. When one of his U.S. colleagues asked about his camera view during a spacewalk last month, Reisman quipped, “I think you’re doing great with that camera. We’re going to hire you to do my cousin's bar mitzvah.”

Soon, the space station will have a more permanent mark of Jewish contributions to space exploration: Reisman’s replacement, Jewish astronaut Gregory Chamitoff, is bringing two mezuzahs.

A visit to a matzo factory

Dry-docked

I always had this idea in mind that the first creature to live upon dry land didn’t exactly choose its new habitat. Rather, it bolted from the sea to end a harrowing chase by a hungry predator. But after a series of interviews this week for a story about how rare it is for moons to form like Earth’s did, there’s another video reel spinning.

This time, the hapless creature or creatures, find themselves beached when tidal surges caused by the moon’s gravitational tug subside. It’s a far less dramatic story, though there’s still plenty of death. After all, few residents of the sea likely were equipped to survive on land. Those that did, however, thrived at the top of the food chain in a new world.

“There’s a reason we’re not having this interview gurgling under water,” George Rieke, with of the University of Arizona, Tucson, tells me.

All this is a little tangential to the story I’m writing, which is about a study indicating most stars don’t have planets with moons formed by giant impacts, which is how Earth’s moon was born. Rieke indulges me with a game of devil’s advocate: Would the tidal surges that seem key to complex life arising on Earth occur if a planet’s moon was a captured asteroid? What about if it were part of a a dual planet system, like Pluto and Charon?

All theoretically possible, he says, except that the gravitational forces needed to snare an asteroid as large as Earth’s moon, don’t exist among the inner planets (in our solar system, at least); and the laws of nature as so different in the deep freeze where Pluto and Charon reside, no telling if that sort of system can survive closer to their mother stars.

That leaves the bigger question unanswered: Was it all an accident that the Mars-sized body whacked into the perfectly positioned baby Earth, causing a big hefty moon to form at just the right distance to influence events on the homeland so complex life could evolve.

I’ve never met the man, but when I lay all this out to Rieke, I can see him smiling.