2008 - 2009 Annual Report - St. John's-Kilmarnock School

Alumni Profiles
Mark Dejmek '89
Canada In Space
It is now just after three in the morning and
far in the distance, I see what seem to be
streetlights. I’m in a taxi on a dimly-lit
stretch of road, lined with a dense set of
green pruned trees, in an unfamiliar city. I
am in a country where they drive on the left,
have a world-acknowledged passion for
advanced electronic devices, and design
many of the world’s most reliable
automotive vehicles. I have spent the last
three hours in a space station mission
control room, working with Canadian Space
Agency Astronaut, Bob Thirsk, who was
launched into space from Kazakhstan about
a month ago, and who will be living and
working there for another five. This is,
without a doubt, the international and
intercultural intersection between human
space flight and cutting-edge research in
space science.
I arrived in Japan about nine hours ago,
after leaving my family and the confines of
my home on the south-shore of Montreal.
My fifteen hour journey to the other side of
the planet was complete with research
teleconferences, the synthesis of large
amounts of technical and scientific
documentation, and was peppered with
unforeseen circumstances just to keep
things exciting, as if they weren’t enough
already. I slept through the bus ride out of
Tokyo and arrived into the city of Tsukuba,
home of the Tsukuba Space Center. This is
where the Japanese train astronauts and
command and control their space research
laboratory, the newest and largest element
of the International Space Station (ISS)
Program. In 2008, Canada’s robotic arm was
used to permanently install it there.
Within an hour of arriving to my hotel room,
my colleague Matsumoto-san asks whether
I am tired from my trip. I smile and ask him
what he has in mind. He informs me that
Bob Thirsk, or Bob-san as he’s known
around here, will begin the last phase in the
assembly of a Japanese research
experiment on the ISS in less than two
hours. Bob has been assembling the
apparatus over the past two days and the
Japanese have been planning and
developing it over the past fifteen years. The
experiment is one of many to be operated
on the Japanese Fluid Physics Experiment
Facility, just one of dozens of world-class
research racks installed in the orbiting
space laboratory. I am whisked away from
the hotel and join the Japanese team “onconsole”
just in time for the daily planning
conference, the fifteen minute space-toground
communication between the space
expedition crew members and ground
controllers from Huntsville, Houston,
Montreal, Cologne, Moscow, and Tsukuba.
The integrated efficiency with which
real-time ISS communications occurs,
transcending time zones, languages,
nations, and cultures, is impressive and
inspiring. I think back to how I suggest,
on the odd occasion, to incorporate such
elements into my routine life with my wife
and other family members, and a big grin
overcomes my face. Over the years, I have
learned that the emotion and descriptive
nature of poetry and language expression
is most enjoyed and best kept to love and
relationships. I quickly come back to the
dry but efficient world of space operations,
just as exciting nonetheless. Bob-san
reports down to our Japanese colleagues
and, over the next two and a half hours,
he completes his tasks and makes two
collaborating scientific nations proud. Both
Canada and Japan are now prepared to
continue the study of fluids in the free-fall
environment of low earth orbit, and this
experiment is providing important data
related to advanced research in
semiconductor production. Matsumoto-san,
the scientific coordinator of the fluid rack,
and I exchange congratulatory remarks on
another first in a long line of Space Station
research successes.
I have come to Japan to attend two
international science team meetings related
to Canada’s participation in fluid
experiments. Space science is a fascinating
and interdisciplinary area of world-wide
research that includes space astronomy,
planetary exploration, and both space life
and physical sciences. The role of gravity
and the harsh space environment on the
human body, and on physical and chemical
processes important in industry, is as the
heart of the last two scientific disciplines.
They form a vast majority of experiments
found on the ISS orbiting laboratory, the
largest and most complex spacecraft ever
built. Some say that developing and
maintaining the space laboratory is the
easier part of the international endeavour.
Even more challenging may be to broadly
apply the scientific and technical knowledge
gained there to the tangible and sustained
benefit of Canadians and humanity. This will
take some time to accomplish and will
certainly necessitate the same
determination and cooperation amongst
nations as was required to get the lab and
its six person crew there in the first place.
At the core of space life and physical
science programs world-wide is the push to
advance scientific knowledge in areas such
as bone demineralization, muscle
degradation, human balance and
coordination, as well as material
solidification and processes, fluid physics
and fluid behaviour, combustion and energy
production, and protein crystal structure.
Each one of these research areas has the
potential to impact our daily lives in
measurable ways. The long-term objective
of such research is to ultimately delay the
symptoms and onset of osteoporosis, the
degradation of muscle function, and
changes over time to control our ability in
coordinating functional body activities. It is
also to develop new metal alloys and
increase the efficiency of semiconductor
production, to use less energy in heating our
homes and in energy production, and to
develop new drugs to counter serious