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What Did Astronaut Scott Kelly Do After a #YearInSpace?

Astronaut Scott Kelly just returned from his One-Year Mission aboard the International Space Station. After spending 340 days on orbit, you can imagine that he started to miss a few Earthly activities. Here are a few things he did after his return home:

Watched a Sunset

While on the International Space Station for his One-Year Mission, astronaut Scott Kelly saw 16 sunrises/sunsets each day…so he definitely didn’t miss out on the beauty. That said, watching a sunset while on Earth is something that he had to wait to see. Tweet available HERE. 

Ate Fresh Food

After spending a year on the International Space Station, eating precooked food, anyone would be excited to dig into a REAL salad. Astronaut Scott Kelly was no exception, and posted about his first salad on Earth after his one-year mission. Learn more about what astronauts eat while in space HERE. Tweet available HERE.

Jumped into a Pool

Water is a precious resource in space. Unfortunately, that means that there isn’t a pool on the space station. Luckily, astronaut Scott Kelly was able to jump into some water after his return to Earth. Tweet/video available HERE.

Sat at a Dinner Table

While living on the International Space Station, crew members regularly enjoy their meals together, but do so while floating in microgravity. The comfort of pulling up a chair to the dinner table is something they can only experience once they’re back home on Earth. Tweet available HERE.

Enjoyed the Weather

When crew members live on the space station they can’t just step outside for a stroll. The only time they go outside the orbiting laboratory is during a spacewalk. Even then, they are confined inside a bulky spacesuit. Experiencing the cool breeze or drops of rain are Earthly luxuries. Tweet available HERE.

Stopped by the Doctor’s Office

The One-Year Mission doesn’t stop now that astronaut Scott Kelly is back on Earth. Follow-up exams and tests will help scientists understand the impacts of microgravity on the human body during long-duration spaceflight. This research will help us on our journey to Mars. Tweet available HERE. 

Visited the Denist

When you spend a year in space, you’ll probably need to catch up on certain things when you return to Earth. Astronaut Scott Kelly made sure to include a visit to the dentist on his “return home checklist”. Tweet available HERE.

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That looks pretty damn cool.

(via The World’s First ‘Marschitect’ Is Laying the Groundwork for Architecture in Space — How We Get To Next)

this is a massive step forward for renewable energy (x) | follow @the-future-now

Kate Rubins’ Space Station Science Scrapbook

As a child, Kate Rubins dreamed of being an astronaut and a scientist. During the past four months aboard the International Space Station, that dream came full circle. She became the first person to sequence DNA in space, among other research during her recent mission, adding to her already impressive experience. She holds a doctorate in molecular biology, and previously led a lab of 14 researchers studying viruses, including Ebola.

Here’s a look back at Rubins in her element, conducting research aboard your orbiting laboratory.

Kate inside Destiny, the U.S. Laboratory Module

The U.S. national laboratory, called Destiny, is the primary research laboratory for U.S. payloads, supporting a wide range of experiments and studies contributing to health, safety, and quality of life for people all over the world. 

Destiny houses the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG), in which Kate worked on the Heart Cells experiment.

Swabbing for Surface Samples

Microbes that can cause illness could present problems for current and future long duration space missions. 

Understanding what microbe communities thrive in space habitats could help researchers design antimicrobial technology. Here, Kate is sampling various surfaces of the Kibo module for the Microbe-IV investigation.

Culturing Beating Heart Cells in Space

The Heart Cells investigation uses human skin cells that are induced to become stem cells, which can then differentiate into any type of cell. 

Researchers forced the stem cells to grow into human heart cells, which Rubins cultured aboard the space station for one month.

Rubins described seeing the heart cells beat for the first time as “pretty amazing. First of all, there’s a few things that have made me gasp out loud up on board the [space] station. Seeing the planet was one of them, but I gotta say, getting these cells in focus and watching heart cells actually beat has been another pretty big one.”

Innovative Applied Research Experiment from Eli Lilly

The Hard to Wet Surfaces investigation from Eli Lilly, and sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), looks at liquid-solid interactions and how certain pharmaceuticals dissolve, which may lead to more potent and effective medicines in space and on Earth. 

Rubins set up vials into which she injected buffer solutions and then set up photography to track how tablets dissolved in the solution in microgravity.

Capturing Dragon

Rubins assisted in the capture of the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft in July. The ninth SpaceX resupply mission delivered more than two thousand pounds of science to the space station. 

Biological samples and additional research were returned on the Dragon spacecraft more than a month later.  

Sliding Science Outside the Station

Science doesn’t just happen inside the space station. External Earth and space science hardware platforms are located at various places along the outside of the orbiting laboratory. 

The Japanese Experiment Module airlock can be used to access the JEM Exposed Facility. Rubins installed the JEM ORU Transfer Interface (JOTI) on the JEM airlock sliding table used to install investigations on the exterior of the orbiting laboratory.

Installing Optical Diagnostic Instrument in the MSG

Rubins installed an optical diagnostic instrument in the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) as part of the Selective Optical Diagnostics Instrument (SODI-DCMIX) investigation. Molecules in fluids and gases constantly move and collide. 

When temperature differences cause that movement, called the Soret effect, scientists can track it by measuring changes in the temperature and movement of mass in the absence of gravity. Because the Soret effect occurs in underground oil reservoirs, the results of this investigation could help us better understand such reservoirs.

The Sequencing of DNA in Space

When Rubins’ expedition began, DNA had never been sequenced in space. Within just a few weeks, she and the Biomolecule Sequencer team had sequenced their one billionth “base” – the unit of DNA - aboard the orbiting laboratory. 

The Biomolecule Sequencer investigation seeks to demonstrate that DNA sequencing in microgravity is possible, and adds to the suite of genomics capabilities aboard the space station.

Studying Fluidic Dynamics with SPHERES

The SPHERES-Slosh investigation examines the way liquids move inside containers in a microgravity environment. The phenomena and mechanics associated with such liquid movement are still not well understood and are very different than our common experiences with a cup of coffee on Earth.

Rockets deliver satellites to space using liquid fuels as a power source, and this investigation plans to improve our understanding of how propellants within rockets behave in order to increase the safety and efficiency of future vehicle designs. Rubins conducted a series of SPHERES-Slosh runs during her mission.

Retrieving Science Samples for Their Return to Earth

Precious science samples like blood, urine and saliva are collected from crew members throughout their missions aboard the orbiting laboratory. 

They are stored in the Minus Eighty-Degree Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI) until they are ready to return to Earth aboard a Soyuz or SpaceX Dragon vehicle.

Measuring Gene Expression of Biological Specimens in Space

Our WetLab-2 hardware system is bringing to the space station the technology to measure gene expression of biological specimens in space, and to transmit the results to researchers on Earth at the speed of light. 

Rubins ran several WetLab-2 RNA SmartCycler sessions during her mission.

Studying the First Expandable Habitat Module on the Space Station

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is the first expandable habitat to be installed on the space station. It was expanded on May 28, 2016. 

Expandable habitats are designed to take up less room on a spacecraft, but provide greater volume for living and working in space once expanded. Rubins conducted several evaluations inside BEAM, including air and surface sampling.

Better Breathing in Space and Back on Earth

Airway Monitoring, an investigation from ESA (the European Space Agency), uses the U.S. airlock as a hypobaric facility for performing science. Utilizing the U.S. airlock allows unique opportunities for the study of gravity, ambient pressure interactions, and their effect on the human body. 

This investigation studies the occurrence and indicators of airway inflammation in crew members, using ultra-sensitive gas analyzers to evaluate exhaled air. This could not only help in spaceflight diagnostics, but that also hold applications on earth within diagnostics of similar conditions, for example monitoring of asthma.

Hot Science with Cool Flames

Fire behaves differently in space, where buoyant forces are removed. Studying combustion in microgravity can increase scientists’ fundamental understanding of the process, which could lead to improvement of fire detection and suppression systems in space and on Earth. 

Many combustion experiments are performed in the Combustion Integration Rack (CIR) aboard the space station. Rubins replaced two Multi-user Droplet Combustion Apparatus (MDCA) Igniter Tips as part of the CIR igniter replacement operations.

Though Rubins is back on Earth, science aboard the space station continues, and innovative investigations that seek to benefit humans on Earth and further our exploration of the solar system are ongoing. Follow @ISS_Research to keep up with the science happening aboard your orbiting laboratory.  

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What’s hard about Mars?

Mars, unlike the Moon, is far away. It also has an atmosphere - but not a useful one. Atmospheric density, wind, dust storms… all of these things contribute to a larger list of circumstances that any given mission needs to be ready for.

All those circumstances contribute heavily to the cost, time and hard resources needed to be poured into the mission preparation. In addition, the vast distance to Mars means the cost of carrying all this prepared hardware must be covered.

The atmosphere of Mars is such that if you’re going too fast during entry, you’ll burn up. It’s such a low density however that parachutes aren’t tremendously useful.

During the Curiosity rover’s landing it needed a heat shield, a supersonic parachute, rocket boosters to slow it down, a sky-crane to allow Curiosity to drop to the surface like an interplanetary spider and then explosive propulsion to send the platform it dropped from a safe distance away to crash into the surface.

During this landing, the rover experienced a force of about 15 g’s. That force would make a 200 lb man weigh 3000 lbs. Without proper precautions it would make the average head snap down at about 150 to 165 lbs.

NASA’s developing a new type of parachute and it’s being attached to a flying saucer-like spacecraft known as the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator. This is currently hoped to provide NASA with a stable go-to architecture for future Mars missions.

The red planet’s killed most missions sent there. Power for solar-panels on rovers get covered during planet-wide dust storms. Some missions smashed into its moons. Some have smashed into its surface. Others have simply missions the planet entirely only to drift away as Mars dances around the Sun.

The world is an untamed place and has sought to buck all attempts to temper its mysteries.  

(Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin (G. Neukum) / animation by Emily Lakdawalla)

The beautiful chaos of watching 12 frantic astrophysics students try to save a theoretical astronaut from falling into a black hole. I’ve never seen a group of people work so quickly and efficiently before.

Scientists invented fabric that makes electricity from motion and sunlight. To create the fabric, researchers at Georgia Tech wove together solar cell fibers with materials that generate power from movement. It could be used in “tents, curtains, or wearable garments,” meaning we’d virtually never be without power. Source

Chasma Boreale and North Polar Ice Cap of Mars by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on Flickr.

Mars has bright polar caps of ice that are easily visible from telescopes on Earth. A seasonal cover of carbon-dioxide ice and snow is observed to advance and retreat over the poles during the Martian year. Scientists using radar data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have found a record of the most recent Martian ice age recorded in the planet’s north polar ice cap. This image is a simulated 3-D perspective view of Chasma Boreale, a canyon that reaches 570 kilometers (350 miles) into the north polar cap. It was created from image data taken by the THEMIS instrument on NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Canyon walls rise about 1,400 meters (4,600 feet) above the floor of Chasma Boreale. Where the edge of the ice cap has retreated, sheets of sand are emerging that accumulated during earlier ice-free climatic cycles. Winds blowing off the ice have pushed loose sand into dunes, then driven them down-canyon in a westward direction.

Elevated Bus That Drives Above Traffic Jams

Space Station Research: Air and Space Science

Each month, we highlight a different research topic on the International Space Station. In June, our focus is Air and Space Science.

How is the space station being used to study space? Studies in fundamental physics address space, time, energy and the building blocks of matter. Recent astronomical observation and cosmological models strongly suggest that dark matter and dark energy, which are entities not directly observed and completely understood, dominate these interactions at the largest scales.

The space station provides a modern and well-equipped orbiting laboratory for a set of fundamental physics experiments with regimes and precision not achievable on the ground. 

For example, the CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) is an astrophysics mission that searches for signatures of dark matter (pictured above). It can observe discrete sources of high energy particle acceleration in our local region of the galaxy. 

How is the space station contributing to aeronautics? It provides a long-duration spaceflight environment for conducting microgravity physical science research. This environment greatly reduces buoyancy-driven convection and sedimentation in fluids. By eliminating gravity, space station allows scientists to advance our knowledge in fluid physics and materials science that could lead to better designated air and space engines; stronger, lighter alloys; and combustion processes that can lead to more energy-efficient systems.

How is the space station used to study air? The Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) is a laster remote-sensing instrument, or lidar, that measures clouds and tiny aerosol particles in the atmosphere such as pollution, mineral dust and smoke. These atmospheric components play a critical part in understanding how human activities such as fossil fuel burning contribute to climate change.

The ISS-RapidScat is an instrument that monitors winds for climate research, weather predictions and hurricane monitoring from the International Space Station.

For more information on space station research, follow @ISS_Research on Twitter!

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