NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Raja Chari describe how nonverbal communication in employed on the International Space Station.
Credit: NASA
Credit: NASA
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00:07 >> People on Earth use nonverbal ways to communicate every day, like facial expressions,
00:13 hand signals, body language, and American Sign Language.
00:19 Astronauts in space have their own nonverbal way to communicate too.
00:24 >> During the spacewalk and just generally during space operations all the time,
00:29 communication is hugely important.
00:31 So talking to the people who are outside, talking to the people on the ground,
00:33 and obviously we have radios to do that, but a lot of times we wind
00:36 up having to do that nonverbally.
00:38 >> Hold on.
00:39 Stop.
00:40 >> The hold signal.
00:42 So whether it may be sometimes your ears may not be clearing fast enough
00:45 as the pressure is changing, maybe someone's helping rescue you,
00:48 but you're still attached and you realize that.
00:50 And so in any case, you give them a hold signal, and that should tell everyone
00:54 to stop everything that's all the movement and kind of look around
00:57 and for something that seems abnormal.
01:00 >> You okay?
01:01 I'm okay.
01:02 >> We really want to check on each other, check on our buddies.
01:06 So the way we usually do that is we use the okay hand symbol.
01:10 And so we'll use it as a question and as an answer.
01:13 So if I'm pointing at Raja and then giving him the okay sign, I'm saying, "Are you okay?"
01:19 And if he is, he'll tell me, "I am okay."
01:22 >> I see what you're saying.
01:25 >> There's a lot of nonverbal that just comes from knowing and working
01:29 with people that makes a big difference when you're working day in and day out,
01:32 especially on a high-stress thing like a spacewalk.
01:34 But just the look at someone's face can tell you like either, "Yeah, I'm good with this plan,"
01:39 or "I've got reservations, maybe we should stop and talk about this."
01:42 And you can do all that with just a glance, even through the glass of the space helmets.
01:48 >> A handful of numbers.
01:50 >> If you're flying formation, which we practice in the T-38,
01:54 we also use hand signals just to keep up with those skills.
01:57 And so one of the most common things is transmitting numbers with your hands.
02:01 And so one, two, three, four, and five are pretty easy.
02:04 And then the way we do seven, eight, nine, six, seven, eight, nine,
02:07 ten without taking your hand off the stick is to turn your hand horizontal.
02:10 And so you can do the same thing with air pressure.
02:13 So for example, if I had a problem with my suit and I was trying --
02:16 she was trying to tell me, you know, what is your oxygen pressure, and I couldn't talk
02:20 because I had a communications problem, I could still tell Kayla, you know,
02:24 I could tell her a one, and then this would tell her one and six.
02:28 And then, you know, I could do a combination of those numbers to transmit
02:31 to her non-verbally what the state of any of my values on my suit, whether it's suit pressure,
02:38 water pressure, temperature, all the different numerical values,
02:41 we can use hand signals for that.
02:43 >> Maybe we could demonstrate a few for each other
02:45 and see if we can tell what the other person's hand signals are.
02:49 So I'll go first, Raja, and you can see if you know what I'm trying to tell you.
02:56 >> What do you think Kayla is trying to communicate?
02:59 Is she telling Raja she can't hear, that he needs to clean his helmet visor,
03:05 or asking him what song he's listening to?
03:09 >> All right, so what Kayla's telling me there is she's pointing to herself,
03:13 which is indicating the person who has the problem.
03:15 You could also point at someone else.
03:17 But in her case, she's pointing at herself, so she's telling me she has a problem.
03:21 And then she waved across her ears, which is telling me she can't hear.
03:25 Okay, so let's say we have that same scenario.
03:27 So we've had some kind of loss of calm, and Kayla came to check on me while I was
03:31 out on a spacewalk, when she got there, I might give her a signal like this.
03:34 >> Can you figure out what Raja is trying to communicate?
03:40 That they need to move to the other side of the space station?
03:44 That they need to wrap up and finish what they're doing?
03:47 Or is he asking her to do a flip in microgravity?
03:53 >> So there, Raja would be trying to communicate to me that we need to speed
03:56 things up.
03:56 Maybe he has a problem that's accelerating or getting worse.
03:59 So he's saying, it's kind of an urgent situation here, let's get a move on,
04:04 more or less.
04:06 >> Next time you see astronauts on a spacewalk,
04:08 look out for some of the hand signals you learned today.
04:12 You can even try them out with your friends to talk in your own nonverbal code.
04:16 For more fun with STEM, visit stem.nasa.gov.
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