Category Archives: Space Station

July 11, 2017 by Tomasz Nowakowski, Astrowatch.net, Universe Today Credit: NanoRacks

Founded in 2009, the Houston, Texas-based company NanoRacks LLC provides commercial hardware and services onboard the International Space Station (ISS) for government and commercial customers. To date, the firm has sent more than 550 payloads from over 30 countries to ISS, creating trends in commercial hardware in space. In an interview with Astrowatch.net, Jeffrey Manber, the founder and CEO of NanoRacks, talks about the company's future and past achievements.

Astrowatch.net: What are you future plans for the company? What is your priority for the coming years?

Jeffrey Manber: We are growing into the world's first commercial space station company. Today, our focus is on completing our commercial airlock on the ISS, which will allow far larger satellites and cargo to be deployed from the station. We are also moving forward on re-use of existing in-space hardware for commercial habitats and marketing other real estate in space, such as Blue Origin's suborbital New Shepard platform. We want to be the market leader in owning or operating as much real estate in space, from low-earth orbit to deep space to the moon and Mars, as is commercially possible.

Astrowatch.net: Your company is involved in many projects onboard the ISS. Could we call NanoRacks a trend setter when it comes to developing commercial hardware on ISS?

Manber: I would like to think that is correct. We were first to market on the station in owning and marketing our own hardware. We were first to have non-U.S. customers, first to have commercial satellite customers using the space station and we paved the way for using the space station in myriad commercial projects, from education to basic research to biopharma.

Astrowatch.net: How is your cooperation with NASA going? Do you plan some projects involving other space agencies?

Manber: Great question. The relationship with NASA has matured in many ways. NASA and the space station program office no longer question whether companies can and should make a profit providing services on the station using their own hardware. The space station office now supports our new projects, such as airlock, where we are self-funding. So the partnership with NASA has matured. They are at times a customer, they are our regulator and they are our landlord. Just as it should be in a commercial relationship!

We have very good relations with other space agencies. ESA is a customer of ours for satellite deployment. So, too, the European Union Commission. We work extensively within the Japanese module KIBO via the U.S.-Japan barter arrangement, so we have wonderful relations with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and so too with the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), with whom we work on both Progress and Soyuz.

NanoRacks is unusual in how deep is our relations with non U.S. space agencies. This is good as we look to return to the moon and move on to Mars.

Astrowatch.net: Are commercial space companies the future of spaceflight?

Manber: The industry is on the cusp of having space be just another place to do business. We are seeing multiple private launch vehicle efforts, we are seeing government behaving more and more as a customer. We are seeing companies like NanoRacks beginning to look beyond the International Space Station to see a marketplace where there are multiple space stations, all commercial, some unmanned for in-space manufacture, some manned as hotels, some for professionals to train for deep space missions.

Astrowatch.net: Which of NanoRacks' products on ISS is the most important for you and why? Which one was the biggest milestone for your company?

Manber: Right now our satellite deployment hardware is important because it is a large percentage of our current revenue! But as we look to the future, the airlock will be key, because not only will it increase our revenue from today for cargo egress and satellite deployment, but at some point in the future, we will remove the airlock from ISS and attach it to our own commercial platform.

How cool is that? Oh, I would say our biggest milestone was successful deployment of satellites. Or when we agreed to accept NASA funding for a research hardware called Plate Reader and NASA was nervous because we were new. So we agreed that if Plate Reader did not work, we would refund the taxpayers money. Luckily, it all worked! But I have not seen any other company make that same offer when taking the space agency's funding. But it was a turning point for us when NASA realized we were serious.

Astrowatch.net: You have recently made a statement that the company's mission is to democratize access to space. How close to achieving this goal is NanoRacks?

Manber: It is fair to say that after 550 payloads in seven years of operations from over 30 nations, including high schools and new nations to space, that after stimulating the growth of an entire new marketcommercial CubeSatsNanoRacks is today democratizing use of this incredible new frontier. Anyone, anywhere, from China to Vietnam, from Peru to Brooklyn, can and has used NanoRacks to undertake a commercial space research project. We have even had multiple customers whose funding came from crowd sourcing websites. It is a revolution and we are proud to be a leader in realizing this revolution in space utilization. Who knows what will be the situation in just five years?

Explore further: NASA approves first commercial airlock for space station science and SmallSat deployment

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Originally posted here:
NanoRacks CEO discusses trends in commercial space hardware - Phys.Org

As part of its mission to send people into space, humanity has to answer many questions, and one of those questions involves whether humans are mentally capable of spending long periods of time within relatively tiny self-sustaining space stations. To help determine this, four university students have volunteered to spend 200 days living inside of a self-sustaining space station located in a Beijing suburb.

The four volunteers are students at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and theyre now officially residents of the Lunar Palace-1, where they kicked off their 200-day test on Sunday. The system is designed to supply everything theyll need, recycling everything the team produces while using plants for oxygen and special lights in substitution of sunlight. The team will not experience sunlight for the full 200 days.

Importantly, this project will also evaluate the mental effects of spending long periods of time in this type of environment. While the residency may not be burdensome in short cases, the long-term effects could be serious, possibly leading to depression or other issues. The researchers have created a list of daily tasks as a way to help combat any depression that may set in, but further data may lead to better solutions in the future.

The researchers are also specifically looking at how the prolonged period without exposure to sunlight will effect the volunteers, though Reuters reports that not much information was provided on that topic. This isnt the first time the Lunar Palace-1 has had residents; a previous 60-day run was performed, a time period in which at least one resident reported feeling a bit low after awhile.

SOURCE: Reuters

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Students will spend 6 months living in a 'space station' to test mental effects - SlashGear

July 11, 2017 by Chris Bergin

TheInterim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) is now deep into its latest phase of processing, as it prepares to be housed in theSpace Station Processing Facility (SSPF) a facility once packed with modules waiting for their ride on Shuttles to make up the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The ICPS will be the Upper Stage for the maiden flight of the Space Launch System (SLS). ICPS:

The ICPS will only have a short lifetime with SLS, as the program aims to swiftly move to themore powerful Exploration Upper Stage (EUS)that will be the workhorse Upper Stage for SLS throughout the 2020s.

However, for the ICPS, the mission with SLS is only a change of call signs for this veteran unit, with years of previous and future service with the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV rocket fleet.

The official plan has revolved around moving to the EUS by the second or third flight of SLS, pending the readiness of the new EUS. The initial plan was to human rate another ICPS for EM-2, but NASA wants to bring the EUS online by the second SLS flight.

Based on the schedule slips for SLS and the large gap between EM-1 and EM-2 the plan is to revamp the Mobile Launcher umbilicals to cater for the Block 1B SLS after EM-1 (Exploration Mission-1) launches.

The EM-1 upper stage which is effectively a regular Delta Cryogenic Second Stage (DCSS) was shipped from the ULA facility in Decatur, Alabama aboard the Mariner barge earlier this year, arriving at the Cape in March.

It is currently housed in ULAs Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) to begin processing for launch at the ULA Delta Operations Center. That work is now drawing to a close.

The next move will see it take a short journey to the SSPF, prior to a formal handover between ULA and NASA.

The Operations Planning team, specifically the Spacecraft Offline Operations (SOO) team are supporting the delivery of the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) to the Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF). It is expected to be accelerated ten days from predicted August 1, 2017 to July 21, 2017, noted a Ground Systems Development and Operations (GSDO) update.

The SSPF is a three story structure containing 42,455 sq meters (457,000 sq ft) of offices, laboratories, and processing areas. It is located on NASA Causeway immediately east of the O&C (Operations & Checkout) Building.

The facility houses bays that were used for horizontal processing of components for the International Space Station and other Space Shuttle Payloads. With the payloads since launched on the now-retired Space Shuttle fleet resulting in the impressive orbital outpost that is now into its utilization phase the facility is almost empty of space hardware.

Prelaunch activities that took place in the SSPF included receipt, handling, and assembly of space station hardware, testing of experiments for proper configuration, and verification of critical systems and system interfaces. As such it makes it the perfect home for the ICPS ahead of its launch with the first SLS rocket.

The ICPS wont be officially handed over (or turned over) until some weeks after the ICPS arrives in the SSPF, allowing the Stages caretakers from ULA to continue to look after the ICPS and provide guidance to its new engineers.

Preparations are underway and include a contractor letter of direction for host role in the early weeks with the formal DD250 turnover to follow, hurricane plan development and approval, SSPF facility panel sampling, added the GSDO update.

(The) plan is for United Launch Alliance (ULA) access to perform monitoring and maintenance until formal turnover, and a likely transporter demonstration at the SSPF. All of these are to be addressed by the planned readiness review scheduled for July 19, 2017, at the Operations Processing Project Review (OPPR).

The eventual destination for the ICPS will bethe Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at KSC, in preparation for mating atopthe SLS stack.

The stack will be integrated while sitting onthe Mobile Launcher, which will provide the lifeblood of electrical and fluid support, along with the all-important prop loading whilst at the pad.

That connection between the ML and the ICPS will be the Interim Cryogenic Propulsive Stage Umbilical (ICPSU) will be a T-0 umbilical.

While some umbilicals have already been installed onto the ML, the ICPSU is expected to be connected in September to October timeframe well ahead of the timeframe the first SLS is scheduled to be mated with the ML in the VAB.

(Images: NASA, ULA and L2 Orbital ATK and L2)

(L2 is as it has been for the past several years providing full exclusive SLS and Exploration Planning coverage. To join L2, click here:https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/)

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SLS Upper Stage set to take up residence in the former home of ISS modules - NASASpaceflight.com

BEIJING (Reuters) - Sealed behind the steel doors of two bunkers in a Beijing suburb, university students are trying to find out how it feels to live in a space station on another planet, recycling everything from plant cuttings to urine.

They are part of a project aimed at creating a self-sustaining ecosystem that provides everything humans need to survive.

Four students from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics entered the Lunar Palace-1 on Sunday with the aim of living self-sufficiently for 200 days.

They say they are happy to act as human guinea-pigs if it means getting closer to their dream of becoming astronauts.

Ill get so much out of this, Liu Guanghui, a PhD student, who entered the bunker on Sunday, said. Its truly a different life experience.

President Xi Jinping wants China to become a global power in space exploration, with plans to send the first probe to the dark side of the moon by 2018 and to put astronauts on the moon by 2036. The Lunar Palace 365 experiment may allow them to stay there for extended periods.

STR via Getty Images

For Liu Hong, a professor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the projects principal architect, said everything needed for human survival had been carefully calculated.

Weve designed it so the oxygen (produced by plants at the station) is exactly enough to satisfy the humans, the animals, and the organisms that break down the waste materials, she said.

But satisfying physical needs is only one part of the experiment, Liu said. Charting the mental impact of confinement in a small space for such a long time is equally crucial.

They can become a bit depressed, Liu said. If you spend a long time in this type of environment it can create some psychological problems.

Liu Hui, a student leader who participated an initial 60-day experiment at Lunar Palace-1 that finished on Sunday, said that she sometimes felt a bit low after a days work.

The projects support team has found mapping out a specific set of daily tasks for the students is one way that helps them to remain happy.

But the 200-day group will also be tested to see how they react to living a for period of time without sunlight. The projects team declined to elaborate.

We did this experiment with animals... so we want to see how much impact it will have on people, Liu, the professor, said.

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China Launches 200-Day Test Of Self-Sustaining Space Station - HuffPost

While some nations may be content to simply set foot on the moon, China has bigger things in mind. President Xi Jinping has said he wants his country to become a force in space exploration, and the plan is to start at the celestial body closest to Earth.

China wants to send a probe to the dark side of the moon by next year, and put astronauts on its surface by 2036, Reuters reports. But those astronauts may be staying for a bit longer than Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin: As part of its Lunar Palace 365 project, China is testing a self-sustaining space station that provides inhabitants with everything a person needs to survive, which could lead to extended stays on the moon.

Related: How rocket fuel mined from the moon will get us to Mars

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On Sunday, four students atBeihang Universityin Beijing entered Lunar Palace-1, a 160-square-meterbioregenerative life-support base located in one of the city's suburbs. They replaced a group who lived inside the station for 60 days, but the latest batch of students to call Lunar Palace-1 home will not leave until they've been living self-sufficiently for 200 days."I'll get so much out of this," Liu Guanghui, a Ph.D. studentwho entered the bunker on Sunday,told Reuters. "It's truly a different life experience."

The station's specifications have been meticulously curated. "We've designed it so the oxygen [produced by plants at the station] is exactly enough to satisfy the humans, the animalsand the organisms that break down the waste materials," said Liu Hong, the project's principal architect.

While living in Lunar Palace-1, students will recycle everything from leftover plant matter to their own waste. The latter task may bring to mind the Matt Damoncharacter Mark Watney in the 2015 film The Martian, in which an astronaut was forced to jerry-rig a space station to support him after he was left on Mars. In addition to using his own waste to fertilize plants, Watney had to cope with the psychological toll of being isolated from the outside world. The same is true of the Chinese students testing Lunar Palace-1.

"They can become a bit depressed," Liu Hong said of the students. "If you spend a long time in this type of environment it can create some psychological problems."

Students are given specific daily tasks that help keep their spirits up, but it's difficult to gauge the psychological effect of living in an environment so radically different than what a person is used to. When NASA astronaut Scott Kelly returned from living on the International Space Station for 340 consecutive days, he spoke of how the psychological stress was "harder to quantify and perhaps as damaging" as any physical changes he experienced.

Liu Hui, a student who participated in the initial 60-day experiment at Lunar Palace-1, said she at times"felt a bit low" at the end of the day. The students currently in the station will be there for more than three times as long as Liu Hui, so the psychological effect of a prolonged stay remains to be seen. It's a trick problem, but one that China and the rest of the world will have to negotiate if humanity ever wants to colonize anything outside of the Earth's atmosphere.

The rest is here:
Life on the Moon: China Is Testing a Self-Sustaining Space Station That Could Allow Long-Term Lunar Living - Newsweek

A Chinese DNA experiment was among the 25 NanoRacks-brokered experiments a SpaceX Dragon delivered to ISS in early June. Credit: NASA

This articleoriginally appeared in the June 19, 2017 issue of SpaceNews magazine.

Collaboration between China and the United States in space is difficult. Federal law prohibits NASA from bilateral cooperation with China unless the agency first receives congressional approval. Export control restrictions prevent U.S. companies from selling hardware to Chinese companies, or launching satellites on Chinese rockets.

One initiative, though, could open the door for greater cooperation between the two space powers, eventually. One of the payloads delivered to the International Space Station on a Dragon cargo spacecraft in early June was an experiment developed by Deng Yulin, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology in China. The experiment will test the effects of the space radiation environment on DNA.

The experiment was one of more than 25 brought to the station by NanoRacks, the Houston-based company whose services include delivering and operating experiments on the ISS. What made the experiment stand out was not so much its science or technology but that it was the first Chinese-built experiment to go to the station.

Jeffrey Manber, chief executive of NanoRacks, said the decision to fly the payload was based on business, not politics. Why are we working with China? Because theyre in space, he said during an event in New York June 5, the same day the Dragon berthed to the station.

The experiment flew once before on a Chinese mission, Manber said, with an abnormality detected in the DNA. We dont know yet if its due to the microgravity or the radiation, he said, hence the desire by Deng to fly it again, this time on the ISS.

The experiment was able to navigate a narrow path to overcome legal obstacles to U.S.-China space cooperation. Because the agreement is with NanoRacks, and not NASA, it does not violate existing limitations on bilateral cooperation between NASA and China. Moreover, since the experiment is imported to the United States, it does not run afoul of export control restrictions.

The company, in a June 5 statement, emphasized that the experiment will remain installed on a NanoRacks platform inside the station, with no access to NASA or other ISS systems. There is, NanoRacks added, no transfer of technology between NASA and China. NanoRacks also worked with NASA to ensure there were no issues flying the experiment.

For us, its not about a political statement, but that we now have another unique international customer, Manber said in that statement.

While the flight of that experiment may not have had geopolitical motivations, it might yet have geopolitical implications. In the U.S., the experiment got very little attention until after its launch. However, in China, it was major news, where it was seen as a milestone. This is a new model of cooperation that we can follow in the future, Deng told the state-run Xinhua news agency.

If a Chinese experiment can fly on the ISS, how else could the United States and China cooperate in space? For now, there are no signs of major changes in current U.S. policy, but its clear the issue cannot be ignored, especially as Chinas spaceflight capabilities grow.

Theyre very active, NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot said at a June 8 hearing of the House Science Committee, when asked about Chinese space capabilities. For us, we have to decide at some point whats going to be our interaction with them.

Manber has his own ideas of how he would like to work with the Chinese in the future. They have a space station as well, he said, and Im going to work as hard as I can to make it international.

Read this article:
One small step for US-China space cooperation - SpaceNews

A group of five softball-sized satellites have had quite the journey: After a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted them into space, astronauts on the International Space Station received the tiny instruments, and on July 7 they shot them into Earths orbit like cannonballs, whose epic flight is shown in the image below.

These five mini-satellites are cubes, not spheres, and they comprise a fleet of instruments called BIRDS, developed by AMSAT-UK, a private organization that designs, builds, and operates amateur satellites. Their mission, aided by the International Space Station, is to improve radio communications from satellites to the receiving stations used by regular folks down on Earth, aka amateurs.

Each of the five BIRD satellites is identical and built by an international team comprised of five disparate nations Bangladesh, Nigeria, Mongolia, Ghana, and Japan. As the little cubes zip around Earth, the radio operators will try and pass control of the satellites between different ground stations around the globe, with an added game-like component: If the ground stations can successfully send data to the satellites, Earthlings everywhere will be rewarded with space-made music.

To get the music, global researchers will upload digital music data (MIDI files) to the little cubes as they pass overhead, and the satellites themselves will transform the data into music using a vocal simulator. This processed music will then be emanated down to anyone interested in listening to these cosmic sounds. AMSAT-UK provides directions for tuning in here, and says that all one needs is a common hand-held receiver and hand-made Yagi antenna positioned to track the satellite at each given pass over the region.

The International Space Station shoots CubeSats into orbit using a Star Wars-like weapon, the double-barreled JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer, which has no malicious or defensive capabilities; it simply fires little cubes into space, sending them to their appropriate locations in Earths orbit.

Read this article:
The Space Station Fires Music-Playing Satellites Into Orbit - Inverse

BEIJING Sealed behind the steel doors of two bunkers in a Beijing suburb, university students are trying to find out how it feels to live in a space station on another planet, recycling everything from plant cuttings to urine.

They are part of a project aimed at creating a self-sustaining ecosystem that provides everything humans need to survive.

Four students from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics entered the Lunar Palace-1 on Sunday with the aim of living self-sufficiently for 200 days.

They say they are happy to act as human guinea-pigs if it means getting closer to their dream of becoming astronauts.

"I'll get so much out of this," Liu Guanghui, a PhD student, who entered the bunker on Sunday, said. "It's truly a different life experience."

President Xi Jinping wants China to become a global power in space exploration, with plans to send the first probe to the dark side of the moon by 2018 and to put astronauts on the moon by 2036. The Lunar Palace 365 experiment may allow them to stay there for extended periods.

For Liu Hong, a professor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the project's principal architect, said everything needed for human survival had been carefully calculated.

"We've designed it so the oxygen (produced by plants at the station) is exactly enough to satisfy the humans, the animals, and the organisms that break down the waste materials," she said.

But satisfying physical needs is only one part of the experiment, Liu said. Charting the mental impact of confinement in a small space for such a long time is equally crucial.

"They can become a bit depressed," Liu said. "If you spend a long time in this type of environment it can create some psychological problems."

Liu Hui, a student leader who participated an initial 60-day experiment at Lunar Palace-1 that finished on Sunday, said that she sometimes "felt a bit low" after a day's work.

The project's support team has found mapping out a specific set of daily tasks for the students is one way that helps them to remain happy.

But the 200-day group will also be tested to see how they react to living a for period of time without sunlight. The project's team declined to elaborate.

"We did this experiment with animals... so we want to see how much impact it will have on people," Liu, the professor, said.

(Reporting By Natalie Thomas. Editing by Jane Merriman)

MOUNT ETNA, Italy A robot wheels across a rocky, windswept landscape that looks like the surface of some distant planet from a science fiction film. But it is not in outer space, it's on the slopes of Europe's most active volcano.

BEIJING China's launch of a new heavy-lift rocket, the Long March-5 Y2, carrying what the government said was its heaviest ever satellite, failed on Sunday, official news agency Xinhua said.

See the rest here:
China tests self-sustaining space station in Beijing - Reuters

This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

Gravity is a constant for all organisms on Earth. It acts on every aspect of our physiology, behavior and developmentno matter what you are, you evolved in an environment where gravity roots us firmly to the ground.

But what happens if youre removed from that familiar environment and placed into a situation outside your evolutionary experience? Thats exactly the question we ask every day of the plants we growin our laboratory. They start out here in our earthbound lab, but theyre on their way to outer space. What could be a more novel environment for a plant than the zero-gravity conditions of spaceflight?

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By studying how plants react to life in space, we can learn more about how they adapt to environmental changes. Not only are plants crucial to almost every facet of life on Earth; plants will be critical to our explorations of the universe. As we look to a future of possible space colonization, its vital to understand how plants will fare off planet before we rely on them within space outposts to recycle our air and water and supplement our food.

So even while we stay right here on the ground,our research plantsblast off and head to theInternational Space Station(ISS). Already theyve given us some surprises about growing in zero gravityand shaken up some of our thinking about how plants grow on Earth.

A NASA image shows the International Space Station as it flew over Madagascar, with three of the five spacecraft docked to the station, in this photo taken on April 6, 2016. Tim Peake/ESA/NASA/Handout via Reuters

Learning from Stressed-Out Plants

Plants make especially great research subjects if youre interested in environmental stress. Because theyre stuck in one spotwhat we biologists call sessile organismsplants must cleverly deal in place with whatever their environment throws at them. Moving to a more favorable spot isnt an option, and they can do little to alter the environment around them.

But what they can do is alter their internal environmentand plants are masters of manipulating their metabolism to cope with perturbations of their surroundings. This characteristic is one of the reasons we use plants in our research; we can count on them to be sensitive reporters of environmental change, even in novel environments like spaceflight.

Folks have been curious about how plants respond to spaceflight from the very beginning of our ability to get there. We launchedour first spaceflight experimenton Space Shuttle Columbia back in 1999, and the things we learned then are still fueling new hypotheses about how plants deal with the absence of gravity.

Were in Florida, Our Research Plants Are in Space

Spaceflight requires specialized growth habitats, specialized tools for observation and sample collection, and of course specialized people to take care of the experiment on orbit.

A typical experiment begins on Earth in our lab with the planting of dormant Arabidopsis seeds in Petri plates containing a nutrient gel. This gel (unlike soil) stays put in zero gravity, and provides the water and nutrients the growing plants will need. The plates are then wrapped in dark cloth, taken to Kennedy Space Center, and eventually loaded into the Dragon Capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket to catch a ride to the ISS.

Once docked, an astronaut inserts the plates into the plant growth hardware. The light inside stimulates the seeds to sprout, cameras record the growth of the seedlings over time, and at the end of the experiment, the astronaut harvests the 12-day-old plants and save them in tubes of preservative.

Once returned to us on Earth, we can run more tests on the preserved samples to investigate the unique metabolic processes the plants engaged while on orbit.

Unraveling it Back in the Lab

One of the first things we found was that certain root growth strategies that everyone had assumed need gravity actually dont require it at all.

To seek out water and nutrients, plants need their roots to grow away from where they are planted. On Earth, gravity is the most important cue for the direction to grow, but plants also use touch (think of the root tip as a sensitive fingertip) to help navigate around obstacles.

Back in 1880, Charles Darwin showed that when you grow plants along a slanted surface, the roots dont grow straight away from the seed, but rather take a jog to one side. This root growth strategy is called skewing.Darwin hypothesizedthat a combination of gravity and the root touching its way across the surface was behind itand for 130 years, thats what everyone else thought too.

But in 2010, we saw that the roots of the plants we grew on the ISS marched across the surface of their Petri plate in aperfect example of root skewingno gravity required. It was quite a surprise. So whats really behind root-skewing on orbit, since its obviously not gravity?

Plants on the ISS do have a potentially second source of information from which they could get a directional cue: light. We hypothesized that in the absence of gravity to point roots away from the direction of the leaves, light plays a bigger role in root guidance.

What we found was that yes, light is important, but not just any light will dothere has to be a gradient of light intensity for it to act as a useful guide. Think of it in terms of a good smell: you can navigate to the kitchen with your eyes closed when cookies are just coming out of the oven, but if the whole house is flooded equally with the scent of chocolate chip cookies, you couldnt find your way.

Adjusting Their Metabolic Toolbox on the Fly

In the absence of gravity, plants cant use the tools theyre used to for navigation, so they had to craft together another solution. They can do that by regulating the way they express their genes. That way they can make more or less of specific proteins that are helpful or not in zero gravity. Various plant parts came up with their own gene regulation strategies.

We found a number of genes involved in making and remodeling cell walls areexpressed differentlyin space-grown plants. Other genes involved with light-sensingnormally expressed in leaves on Earthare expressed in roots on the ISS. In leaves, many genes associated with plant hormone signaling are repressed, and genes associated with insect defense are more active.These same trendsare also seen in the relative abundance of proteins involved in signaling, cell wall metabolism and defense.

These patterns of genes and proteins tell a storyin microgravity, plants respond by loosening their cell walls, along with creating new ways to sense their environment.

We track these gene expression changes in real time by labeling specific proteins with a fluorescent tag. Plants engineered withglowing fluorescent proteinscan then report how they are responding to their environment as it is happening. These engineered plants act as biological sensorsbiosensors for short. Specialized cameras and microscopes let us follow how the plant is utilizing those fluorescent proteins.

Insights from Space

This kind of research gives us new understanding of how plants sense and respond to external stimuli at a fundamental, molecular level. The more we can learn about how plants respond to novel and extreme environments, the more prepared we are for understanding how plants will deal with the changing environments theyre up against here on Earth.

And of course our research will inform collective efforts to take our biology off the planet. The observation that gravity isnt as vital to plants as we once thought is welcome news for the prospect of farming on other planets with low gravity, and even on spacecraft where there is no gravity. Humans are explorers, and when we leave earths orbit, you can bet well take plants with us!

Anna-Lisa Paul is a Research Professor, Graduate Faculty in Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Florida.

Robert Ferl is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research, University of Florida.

More:
Plant Life on the International Space Station is Blossoming - Newsweek

Move over, Mickey, Southern California has new rodent celebrities. You might call them Micetronauts 2.0.

The first group of star-trekking mice to ever travel to the International Space Station has returned to their home at a UCLA lab, where theyre being studied for a promising new therapy to regrow lost bone density.

All the rodents from ISS made it back alive and healthy on July4!, said Dr. Chia Soo, a lead researcher on UCLAs NELL-1 study.

A group of forty mice blasted into low-Earth orbit 220 miles up on June 3 from Florida, as part of a robust NASA science mission. Other projects on board included an investigation into mysterious pulsar stars believe to hold keys for better navigation and time-keeping capabilities on Earth, and a fruit-fly study into treating weakened cardiac muscles.

Half the mice in the NELL-1 study are still living on the Space Station and being treated with the protein that Soo and her team believe may spur degraded bone to regrow.

The other half splashed down inside a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean off Baja California on Monday, and were unloaded the following morning in San Pedro.

The mice passed through the Earths 3,000-degree Fahrenheit atmosphere, at a rate of force equal to about five times their body weight, without injury, scientists said.

They looked really good. They were very healthy, said Louis Stodieck, director of BioServe Space Technologies at the University of Colorado Boulders aerospace-engineering sciences division.

When the 20 still-orbiting astro-mice return to join those now back in the lab, their bone development will be compared.

Stodieck, who managed the rodents complex travel and care accommodations, joined UCLA researchers as the first to greet the returning rodents. During their travel, they lived inside a special habitat and ate moist, nutrient-rich food bars developed by NASA. (Think of a power bar but not quite so sweet, said Stodieck. The mice love it. Its very good, Ive actually tried it.).

Like returning astronauts, the micetronauts appeared initially unsteady in gravity. Their space habitat had mesh walls, allowing them to crawl around with stability.

They get so adapted to microgravity, that gravity probably feels a little hard, Stodieck said. They looked a little bit tenuous, but theyre getting used to it.

Since the Soviet Sputnik program returned the first animals dogs, rodents and insects from a brief trip around the Earth in 1957, the U.S. Space Shuttle program has gone on to return animals from rocket trips.

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But these are the first U.S. rodents to participate in a lengthy microgravity research trip, and to board the space stations National Laboratory, Stodieck said.

These studies, with animal models, are few and far between. They are difficult and expensive, he said. Its very important for us, in any of these studies, to maximize their scientific utility. The space station is a tremendous laboratory platform. Were learning a lot of things.

Increasingly, researchers are studying the effects of microgravity on stem cells to understand the full potential of space research.

But the mice are promising some exciting results that could help many people on Earth, according to the scientists.

Astronauts (and micetronauts) experience severe bone loss when they travel outside Earths gravity-laden atmosphere. Floating around in microgravity not only depletes bone mass, it also weakens muscles most notably, heart muscle.

If it can work for microgravity-related bone loss, then it could have increased use for patients one day on Earth who have bone loss from trauma or aging, Soo said.

SpaceXs reusable rockets and spacecraft are enabling U.S. researchers to send experiments to orbit affordably from America for the first time in years.

Five years ago, the self-propelling Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to dock at the International Space Station. Its able to return to Earth by plopping, Space Shuttle-style, into the ocean.

Its also built to return to space repeatedly throughout its life.

The Dragon craft that returned the 20 mice to Earth on July 3 previously flew to the Space Station in 2014.

SpaceXs business model relies on such high-tech recycling and on a consistent, persistent launch calendar.

Keeping pace with growing customer demand, SpaceX launched its third rocket in 12 days last Wednesday just 48 hours after two successive dramatic last-second aborts on the launch pad.

The mission also carried hundreds of fruit flies for an investigation into the effects of microgravity on the cardiovascular system.

Fruit fly hearts have similar components to humans and are much closer to humans, in some respect, than mice and rats, said Karen Ocorr, who is leading the study at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla.

The research team sent hundreds of flies packed in six tissue box-sized habitats. Four of the boxes carried 2,000 fly eggs, and others carried hundreds of breeding adults, intended to give birth in space to flies that would return to Earth.

We have a team of 12 people who will be present in the lab when we receive the flies back, Ocorr said. Well spend the next month or more trying to understand the effects on their skeletal muscle and heart muscle function, among other things.

People who have long-term illnesses, or are infirm and spend a long time in bed, experience progressive cardiac dysfunctions, she said, adding that this study could help develop new therapies for weak hearts.

Lennox Middle School students will also soon get back research from inside this Dragon. Theyre studying whether lemon-mint plants grow better, worse, or the same in microgravity, as part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program.

We wanted to use mint because its something we use a lot in our Hispanic culture, said Nayeli Salgado, one of the Lennox school team members. It has many uses stomach aches, ear aches. You can use it instead of medicine. It takes the pain away.

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Meet the mice who soared through space and back again - The San Gabriel Valley Tribune