Orbiter.ch Space News: Space Station Science Highlights: Week of August 13, 2018

dimanche 19 août 2018

Space Station Science Highlights: Week of August 13, 2018

ISS - Expedition 56 Mission patch.

Aug. 19, 2018

Scientific work aboard the International Space Station this week included studies of blood cells, crystals, chemical gardens and more.

Last week, SpaceX CRS-15 Dragon returned research results and other station materials from the space station to Earth for analysis. The next launch of supplies to the space station, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) “Kounotori7” HTV-7 cargo ship from Tanegashima Space Center, Japan, is scheduled for early September.

Space to Ground: ICARUS Ascending: 08/17/2017

Expedition 56 flight engineers Oleg Artemyev and Sergey Prokopyev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos conducted a spacewalk on Wednesday that included manually launching four tiny satellites and installing the ICARUS antenna. The space station’s low orbit means the antenna can track more than 15 million transmitters to provide greater insights into large-scale, long-term migratory patterns of animals and insects. A pair of spacewalks are planned for September as well.

Read more details about the scientific work aboard your orbiting laboratory:

Red, white and breath

Crew members collected breath samples for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Marrow study this week, as well as blood samples for Marrow and JAXA’s Cell-Free Epigenome and Medical Proteomics investigations.

Marrow looks at the effect of microgravity on bone marrow. Scientists suspect that microgravity has a negative effect on bone marrow and the blood cells produced there, similar to the effect of long-duration bed rest on Earth. Breath samples analyzed by gas chromatograph measure red blood cell function, and white blood cell function is studied through genetic expression.

Image above: Air sample collection hardware for The MARROW investigation, which looks at the effects of microgravity on bone marrow and analyzes breath
samples to measure red blood cell function and understand how blood cell production is altered in microgravity. Image Credit: NASA.

How does your chemical garden grow?

Crew members conducted operations this week for Chemical Gardens, processing packets and setting up video recording.

Adding selected metal salts to an aqueous solution of sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) results in formation of inorganic structures that resemble plant growth within a time span ranging from minutes to hours. On Earth, the effects of gravity on the reactants complicates understanding of the physics behind these “chemical gardens”. Removing gravity ensures diffusion controlled growth and allows researchers to better assess its initiation and evolution, providing important information about how micro-structures can be engineered from self-organizing chemical reactions.

Image above: Chemical garden formed by the addition of cobalt, copper, iron, nickel, and zinc salts to a sodium silicate solution. Image Credits: Oliver Steinbock chemistry group, Florida State University.

Growing better crystals

The crew worked on two crystal growth experiments this week, the CASIS PCG 13 and Barrios PCG investigations. Crew members set up hardware and successfully filled PCG 13 card wells, and mixed and placed Barrios PCG samples into the Space Automated Bioproduct Laboratory (SABL).

Protein crystal growth experiments often require multiple tries to generate ideal results. With PCG 13, crew members can observe results while samples are still on the space station, allowing for adjustments. This dramatically reduces the time and cost to conduct an experiment and the ability to make real-time changes to the experiment protocols could represent a game-changer for future protein crystal growth research. Analyzing rate and quality of the crystal growth is scheduled for next week during a microscopy session.

Barrios PCG focuses on the successful transfer and mixing of different solutions into commercial, off-the-shelf, multi-well plates, allowing simultaneous growth of crystals from different protein solutions. Investigators receive downlinked video of crystal growth for evaluation. Multi-well plates make possible more efficient comparison of results and could enable custom-made medications for crew members on future space exploration missions as well as speed up development of pharmaceuticals on Earth.

A swarm of small satellites

Crew members conducted the first run of the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) ReSwarm investigation this week.

Image above: NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold and Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev conduct a SPHERES maintenance session in the Japanese Experiment Module. Image Credit: NASA.

ReSwarm develops algorithms to control multiple small vehicles that can distinguish the task of maintaining a formation configuration from steering it across the environment, thus simplifying communication requirements. Formation configuration is maintained using relative sensing and minimum or no communication, providing scalable and fast control of the vehicles without each needing to know all states of its neighbors. The formation then can be steered by a second layer of centralized control programmed to achieve a specific goal.

Crew members also continued maintenance on the Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR), conducting an annual replacement of the Fuel Oxidizer Management Assembly (FOMA) Calibration Unit.