The formation of the first archaeological project in space, the International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP), happened when Chapman University archaeology professor Dr. Justin Walsh decided to look at the requirements NASA had put out for who could become an astronaut. 

Walsh noticed that in the requirements, any level of degrees related to science, technology and engineering were qualified to apply, but not any of the social sciences, which specifically included archaeology.

“It struck me that, at that point, they had been going to space with humans for 54 years, and there’s been hardly any studies about the experiences of humans from a social and cultural perspective — the social sciences perspective,” Walsh told The Panther.

Walsh took inspiration from the Undocumented Migration Project. Headed by University of California, Los Angeles professor of anthropology Jason De León, the project primarily relied on photography as a form of data alongside archaeological techniques. Walsh realized that since the International Space Station (ISS) had been inhabited continuously by at least two people since being launched in 2000, there was a trove of images from across the years, especially as its existence coincided with the increased popularity of digital photography.

“So, if we could take those images and capture data out of them — who’s in what photo, where they are on the station, what objects are associated with them — and index it to time,” Walsh said.

Walsh continued: “You can put them in order, and you can put those associations of people, places and things in order. You can put behaviors in order (and) you can map out long-term life on that space habitat in a way like nobody had ever looked at before or understood or analyzed from the perspective that we have.”

Walsh explained that archaeology is about the “material culture” of a site (in this case, the ISS) such as the objects a society surrounds itself with and its uses. Through analysis, archaeologists can glean the beliefs, societal structure, common activities and other facets of life from the past or — in the ISSAP’s case — a contemporary time period.

“Our goals are really to extend archaeology to a new domain where it hasn’t existed before and see what happens,” Walsh said. “Secondly, we’re interested in characterizing the society and culture of this particular site. Thirdly, I would say we’re interested in documenting disjunctures between how spaces are designed or planned to be used and how they’re actually used. And, finally, as a result of that, (we want to) show how the social sciences can be contributed in a meaningful way to improving long-duration spaceflight.”

With the ISSAP, Walsh intends to examine life in space in a way that not even NASA has considered before by looking through a cultural and societal lens.

The ISSAP examines the material culture of the crew and how they interact with the spaces around each other, such as analyzing which crew members visit certain modules and for how long. They also take a look at nationalities and gender to examine the distribution of the crew and the implications of what Walsh quotes from a 1972 National Academy of Sciences report, a “micro-society in a mini-world.”

Walsh has received assistance from many professionals from across a multitude of scientific fields and from many universities, including Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences professor Wendy Salmond.

“I got involved with the ISSAP when (Walsh) asked me if I could identify some of the Russian icons and other objects that kept reappearing in photos of the Russian module,” said Salmond, who is a Martha Weidlein Masters Professor in Art. “It was a great chance to use my expertise in such a completely new environment and context. I especially loved seeing how objects and ideas and rituals I was familiar with in an earth context were extended out into space.”

Even students have gotten involved in the project; Junior data science major Ryan Shihabi was involved with cataloging archival information from NASA’s website regarding the facilities used aboard the ISS. NASA keeps archival data on every time a certain facility aboard the ISS was used and at what time.

“My job was, in the technical term, (to) data mine all the links that had reports attached to them and bring them into a text file or any format we could use to analyze them much easier,” Shihabi said. “In this case, words like facilities and figuring out how common these facilities are mentioned next to other facilities, we can figure out the relationship or how often after, given that they go to this facility, what the odds are that they’re going to go to this other facility.”

The project was not without its difficulties. None of the researchers themselves could go to the ISS and had to rely solely on photographic information and archival data. Shihabi related an account of how NASA restructured its archival website, leading to several pieces of data being inaccessible, which he circumvented by having previously recorded the information when it had been accessible.

“It’s really just trying to figure out what methods are possible and also trying to figure out how we can leverage accessible evidence to do our studies,” Walsh said.

Despite the difficulties, Walsh, Salmond and Shihabi agreed about the project’s importance, especially with how its data could be used to benefit civilian space flight going forward.

“I can imagine that in another 50 years, the questions the ISSAP is asking will seem so obvious,” Salmond said. “We'll be amazed that it took this leap of faith and imagination to explore the ISS, specifically as a human habitation.”

The project has also been an excellent opportunity for some of the students working on it, including Shihabi himself.

“I was super ecstatic. I believe it was last semester, when (Walsh) said he was showing some of my analysis to these really awesome space companies,” Shihabi said. “I mean, as an undergrad, it’s amazing to get your work out there and have people see it and know it’s truly gonna help the future of infrastructure for space labs.”

The ISSAP is still an ongoing project, and Walsh says that anyone who may be interested in helping out with the project is free to reach out to him at jstpwalsh@chapman.edu to see if an area of particular interest is applicable to the project. 

For interested students, Walsh also said he would be offering a course for the fall 2024 semester called “Cultures of Outer Space.” 

The ISSAP also has its own Twitter page that students can check out for further information.

“It's not too often you get a chance to be in on the ground floor of a new field of inquiry, and there's something for everyone, from programmers and anthropologists to art historians like me,” Salmond said.