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Full-Text Articles in Art and Design
Postorbital Discard And Chain Of Custody: The Processing Of Artifacts Returning To Earth From The International Space Station, Justin St. P. Walsh, Alice C. Gorman, Paola Castaño
Postorbital Discard And Chain Of Custody: The Processing Of Artifacts Returning To Earth From The International Space Station, Justin St. P. Walsh, Alice C. Gorman, Paola Castaño
Art Faculty Articles and Research
Few items that comprise the material culture of the International Space Station ever return to Earth. Most are left on the station or placed on cargo resupply ships that burn up on atmospheric re-entry. This fact presents a challenge for archaeologists who use material culture as their primary evidence. Together with a sociologist, we observed the processes that have been developed by NASA contractors to handle and return items that come back to Earth on the Cargo Dragon vehicle. We observed two missions, CRS-13 and CRS-14, in January and May 2018, respectively, traveling to the locations of work and interviewing …
Visual Displays In Space Station Culture: An Archaeological Analysis, Justin St. P. Walsh, Alice C. Gorman, Wendy Salmond
Visual Displays In Space Station Culture: An Archaeological Analysis, Justin St. P. Walsh, Alice C. Gorman, Wendy Salmond
Art Faculty Articles and Research
We offer an archaeological analysis of the visual display of “space heroes” and Orthodox icons in the Russian Zvezda module of the International Space Station (ISS). This study is the first systematic investigation of material culture at a site in space. The ISS has now been continuously inhabited for 20 years. Here, focusing on the period 2000–2014, we use historic imagery from NASA archives to track the changing presence of 78 different items in a single zone. We also explore how ideas about which items are appropriate for display and where to display them originated in earlier Soviet and Russian …