Astronauts
aboard the International
Space Station (ISS) are kicking their science program up a notch some 200
miles above Earth.
NASA
science officer and ISS commander Michael
Lopez-Alegria and his two Expedition
14 crewmates are breaking new ground aboard their orbital laboratory as they
put some of the space station's newest tools to work.
"The
ongoing process as we've been outfitting the space station and adding
facilities for research has greatly expanded the types of investigations that
we can do on the ISS," said Julie Robinson, NASA's acting ISS program scientist
at the Johnson Space Center.
Lopez-Alegria
has lived aboard the ISS since mid-September, when he and Expedition
14 flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin arrived aboard their Soyuz
spacecraft. Also aboard the ISS is European Space Agency astronaut Thomas
Reiter, also a flight engineer, who arrived
in July during Expedition
13.
Tracking
nutrition
Topping
the list of fresh science aboard the ISS is Lopez-Alegria's ongoing effort to
record how his diet
in space affects his performance in microgravity, Robinson said. Dubbed the
Nutrition and Status Investigation, the experiment tracks Lopez-Alegria's
health in relation to the food and supplements
he ingests during his six-month mission [image].
"It's much
more than nutrition," Robinson said. "We're looking at oxidative stress,
radiation exposure" and other effects.
NASA
scientists know that the human body undergoes substantial changes during
long-duration spaceflights, including a loss of bone and muscle mass, as well
as a steady decline in Vitamin D. Understanding such changes, and developing
countermeasures to keep the human body healthy, are vital for future long-term
missions to the Moon or Mars, researchers said.
While NASA
typically records the physiology of its astronauts before and after flight,
Expedition 14 is the first mission to allow spaceflyers to take blood samples
and store them in flight for later analysis on Earth.
The result
will be "the most comprehensive set of tracking" ever done, Robinson
said.
At the
core of Lopez-Alegria's experiments is a new freezer at work in the space
station's Human Research Facility 2 (HRF-2) rack inside NASA's Destiny
laboratory. The Minus Eighty Laboratory Freezer for ISS arrived at
the ISS in July aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery, but its four
freezer units are being filled for the first time during Expedition 14.
Sleepy
astronaut
Lopez-Alegria
is also participating in a study to track his orbital sleep
and activity patterns to evaluate how his body reacts to life aboard the ISS,
where astronauts experience night and day during each 90-minute orbit around
Earth.
"Previous
studies of shuttle crewmembers have indicated that they have a very poor sleep
pattern," Robinson said. "The concern is that these kinds of poor sleep
patterns can lead to poor performance over time."
When
living in the unforgiving environment that is the vacuum of space, an alert and
functional crew is vital for both work performance and safety.
In order
to monitor his own sleep patterns, Lopez-Alegria wears a watch-like device on
his wrist known as an Actiwatch that is one part light sensor, one part
activity monitor.
"It
silently records both his sleep patterns and light exposure," Robinson
explained, adding that Lopez-Alegria also keeps a separate log that is then
compared to the Actiwatch data.
Plants,
students and Russian experiments
Reiter and
Tyruin, a Russian cosmonaut, too are pursuing their own science experiments
aboard the ISS.
Tyurin's
research program includes experiments for both science and commercial
organizations. Among them investigations into protein crystallization, last week's
orbital golf shot, a biomedical study of heart
and blood circulation in space and a space-based effort to monitor and predict
natural or man-made disasters
on Earth.
Reiter,
meanwhile, has spent some research time growing plants under different light [image]
and gravity environments using the Modular
Cultivation System (EMCS) [image].
The system uses a series of centrifuges to grow seedlings under weightlessness ,
partial gravity or two times Earth gravity (two Gs) after an initial
cultivation period at one G.
"Plants
have a gravity sensing system, a red light sensing system and a blue light
sensing system," explained Robinson. "At the end of the treatment, we take the
seeds and freeze them in MELFI for return to Earth so later, scientists can
look at their genes."
Researchers
hope the experiment, known as Tropi, will aid space-based agriculture for
future long-duration space missions.
Robinson
said the Expedition 14 astronauts are not the only ones conducting science
aboard the ISS. Some 6,585 students from 107 schools and 12 countries have used
an ISS-based camera to study the Earth. They recorded 1,400 images of their
home planet under the continuous EarthKAM project.
Meanwhile,
NASA's STS-116
shuttle astronauts are poised to launch towards the ISS on Dec. 7, and will
ferry tools for seven new science investigations while returning samples from
nine ongoing experiments.
"So it's
an extremely busy period and it's a period that's benefiting hundreds of scientists,"
Robinson said.
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