in what has been deemed a scientific first, a team led by dr. justin walsh of chapman university in california and dr. alice gorman of flinders university in australia — and aided by some helpful astronauts — has carried out an archeology dig of sorts on the international space station, 400 kms above the earth.
just like on-earth archeology, there was missing data that required inferences to be made. for instance, the scientists asked nasa for access to the iss crew planner, a computer system that shows each astronaut’s tasks in five-minute increments. when that was refused, they turned to the iss daily summary reports , published by nasa on its website.
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though less precise than the crew planner, “they also more clearly represent the result of simply observing and interpreting the material culture record,” the team wrote in their paper, “ archaeology in space : the sampling quadrangle assemblages research experiment (square) on the international space station. report 1: squares 03 and 05,” which was posted to the research web site plos one.
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