Scanning from Space Your help is needed in a diff erent


part of the space station. Another astronaut is hooked up to a machine. It’s called ADUM. It uses sound waves to create pictures of the inside of a human body. You aren’t a doctor, but don’t worry.


T is tool was made for astronauts living in space. Astronauts might get sick or injured, but they don’t have a doctor handy. So they use ADUM and send the data back to Earth. You scan your crewmate’s chest


and transmit the images to mission control on Earth. Doctors on the ground are waiting to see the images. Your crewmate has some congestion in his lungs, they say, but it’s nothing serious. He’s going to be okay.


Medical Miracle ADUM was invented for astronauts,


but space is no longer the only place it’s used. Doctors on Earth are using it, too. For example, not long ago, this same technology saved the life of a woman in Brazil. She was living in a village when she


fell ill. T e village doctor knew that her problem was serious, but he had few tools to help her.


22 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER


Life-Saving Technology T e one thing the doctor did have was


an ADUM. He sent a scan to some city doctors, who looked at it. T ey could see the problem and


told the village doctor what to do. Together, they saved the woman’s life.


Monitoring Traffi c Your next task is a space walk. You


put on a spacesuit and head out of the ISS. T ere, you see a yellow object stuck to the outside of the station. It tracks the positions of ships at sea. It picks up the positions of as many as 400,000 ships per day. T e space station collects the data and then sends it back to Earth. T is makes traveling the open ocean safer. T e system has already saved one


life. A fishing boat near Norway hit bad weather. T e crew sent off a call for help before falling into the icy water. T e ISS alerted ships near the sinking boat. Most of the crew was lost, but one fishermen was rescued. You can see now that the antenna


needs a small repair. Mission control says that the signal is coming in strong now. It’s hard to believe that the little things you’re doing in space are helping people back on Earth.


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