Our Laboratory in Space

01Patti Boyd, NASA's Curious Universe For the past 20 years, we have been a space-faring civilization, which is, you know, something that when you say it, you kind of have to stop and let it sink in and realize that really shouldn't be taken for granted.

02Welcome to NASA's Curious Universe.

03I'm Patti Boyd, and in this podcast, NASA is your tour guide.

04250 miles above Earth's surface, a scientific laboratory orbits around our planet.

05Here, astronauts serve as the eyes and hands of researchers on the ground.

06This is the International Space Station.

07And 2020 marks the 20th year since the first humans occupied it.

083, 2, 1.

09We have ignition.

10We have ignition and liftoff.

11Beginning the first expedition to the International Space Station and setting the stage for permanent human presence in space.

12Following that first crew, there has been a continuous human presence aboard the station.

13So if you were born after November in the year 2000, someone has been living in outer space throughout your entire life.

14Over 240 humans from 19 countries have lived aboard the space station, including European Space Space Agency, or ISA astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti.

15The International Space Station, the way I like to refer to it is humanity's outpost in space.

16In 2014, Samantha became the first female Italian astronaut and the second ISA female astronaut to go to space.

17And once she arrived at the space station, she stayed for a long time.

18199 days and 16 hours to be precise.

19Hours spent aboard an ever-changing station with parts from around the world fit together like Lego pieces.

20It's like big soda cans.

21They're called modules and they're like joined to one another in what we call a stack.

22You might imagine the station as a cramped space.

23But the way Samantha describes it is like a really long hallway.

24Samantha Cooley- Sometimes people tell me, you know, how do you deal with claustrophobia or being confined in such a small space?

25And I never had a feeling of being confined just because of how big and spacious it actually is.

26Samantha Cooley- It's gigantic, actually.

27Samantha Cooley- If you were to lay it on the ground, it's about as big as a football field.

28Samantha Cooley- And of course, people float in it.

29Samantha Cooley- So, you know, you'll be floating around.

30Samantha Cooley- You are inhabiting it in the three dimensions.

31Just a few hours from Earth, the space station whips around our planet in low Earth orbit.

32Samantha Cooley- The station, and everything inside, is in a constant freefall towards Earth.

33Samantha Cooley- That's why Samantha and her crew members float while aboard the space station.

34Samantha Cooley- They're experiencing something called microgravity.

35Samantha Cooley- Which is nothing else than a fancy word to say, weightlessness.

36Samantha Cooley- Microgravity is what makes the International Space Station such a special lab.

37Samantha Cooley- And it's a condition that you can't simulate for long periods on Earth.

38Samantha Cooley- There is no way of getting rid of gravity.

39Samantha Cooley- The only thing that you can do is free falling.

40Samantha Cooley- And so on Earth, we can do it for a few seconds and drop towers.

41Samantha Cooley- You know, you can build a tall tower and drop things.

42Samantha Cooley- And for a few seconds, guess what?

43Samantha Cooley- They will be weightless, but eventually the ground, you know, they're going to hit the ground.

44Samantha Cooley- So if you want that exposure to microgravity for a longer time, Samantha Cooley- Then the only way is to go in orbit.

45Samantha Cooley- And so that's why we need the International Space Station.

46Samantha Cooley- Microgravity changes everything.

47Samantha Cooley- Like the kind of physics you can observe and the way the human body operates.

48Samantha Cooley- That's why so many countries come together to oversee the orbiting laboratory.

49Samantha Cooley- It's a way for humans to do science that can't happen anywhere else.

50Samantha Cooley- That's what astronauts on board Samantha Cooley- You can go from doing investigations on human physiology, where the human being, the astronaut, is actually the object of the investigation, or plants, small animals, cell cultures, to the physical sciences.

51Samantha Cooley- So we have a lot of experiments on combustions, on materials, on fluid mechanics.

52Samantha Cooley- The work that a space station crew member does, conducting experiments in space, is not a solo operation.

53There's a whole other team of people that design the experiments.

54Samantha Cooley- People who have their feet planted firmly on the blue planet.

55Samantha Cooley- Like Sharmila Bhattacharya.

56Sharmila leapt at the opportunity to be a scientist at NASA, Samantha Cooley- Because of the novelty of doing experiments in space, and what her findings might mean for humanity.

57Samantha Cooley- It's something that you can't easily simulate Samantha Cooley- What you usually find are so unique and different.

58Not only is there that factor of, Samantha Cooley- Oh my God, you know, look at these changes that we saw.

59Who would have thought?

60Samantha Cooley- But there's another aspect to it.

61The science that you get from it helps us understand Samantha Cooley- Those physiological changes that are happening in humans better.

62Which means that it helps us Samantha Cooley- Come up with better countermeasures for astronauts and for the people who are going to be Samantha Cooley- In space now and in the future.

63Samantha Cooley- Sharmila studies the effects of space on the immune system.

64Samantha Cooley- Our immune system is the way the body protects us against disease.

65Samantha Cooley- We know that when astronauts spend time in space, Samantha Cooley- Their immune systems get a little weaker.

66But we don't yet know why.

67Samantha Cooley- To understand this effect better, Sharmila and her colleagues use tiny research subjects that you might find in your own kitchen.

68Samantha Cooley- The fruit fly, which, you know, this unassuming little, you know, creature that will buzz around your rotting bananas and so on, um, actually proves to be a very useful Samantha Cooley- model organism for science in general.

69Samantha Cooley- We share a lot of our genetic code with fruit flies.

70Samantha Cooley- In fact, six Nobel prizes have been awarded in physiology and medicine for discoveries made in fruit flies.

71But one of the main advantages of researching fruit flies is just the sheer number that you can use.

72Samantha Cooley- We have sent up more flies into space than we have had humans.

73Samantha Cooley- With astronauts, you may have only a few subjects to study.

74Samantha Cooley- But with fruit flies, you can study thousands at a time and get a better understanding of how outer space affects animal biology.

75In some ways, the science Sharmila does is very similar to other biologists.

76In other ways, it's completely different.

77Like the moment when Sharmila must wave goodbye to her flies.

78Samantha Cooley- I still remember the feeling that I had as I watched something that I had touched and worked on just a few hours before be on this gigantic space shuttle that was taking off in front of my eyes and going way beyond where we couldn't see it anymore.

79Samantha Cooley- You know, up to that point, I had focused really more on the day-to-day of getting the experiment to work.

80And then on launch day, when you just get to, for the first time probably in days or weeks or maybe even months, you get to really sit down and take a deep breath and watch the launch in front of you.

81Samantha Cooley- And I just remember feeling that sonic boom just sort of go right through my chest.

82Samantha Cooley- I remember thinking, this is why I do what I do.

83And this is why I work for NASA.

84Samantha Cooley- And this is what makes all of that hard work absolutely worth it.

85Samantha Cooley- On launch day, Sharmila watched as parts of the experiment she spent months preparing soared out of her reach.

86But in space, there was someone to greet Sharmila's fruit flies and run the experiment.

87Samantha Cooley- It doesn't happen every day that you get, you know, little flying animals on space stations.

88Samantha Cooley- Samantha had to help by collecting data, feeding the flies, taking pictures of the flies over time.

89And the fly lab had one essential piece of equipment that she had to keep an eye on.

90Samantha Cooley- We had centrifuges, probably one of the most important aspects of hardware that we could use in science.

91Samantha Cooley- The centrifuge is a machine that spins around and around like an amusement ride, Samantha Cooley- The gravitron.

92You know, the one where people are standing on the edge and spinning so fast that they all become a blur?

93In the gravitron, the force of the spin makes you feel like you can't move, like you're experiencing hypergravity.

94Samantha Cooley- The centrifuge creates a similar effect.

95Samantha Cooley- On station, there is so little gravity that by using the centrifuge, Samantha Cooley- You can mimic what we call normal gravity, the force of gravity felt on Earth.

96Samantha Cooley- So to monitor changes that might happen due to space flight, Samantha Cooley- It's important to split the fruit flies into two groups.

97Samantha Cooley- One said that would be in static positions, and one said that would be in a centrifuge.

98Samantha Cooley- To see what the actual changes were in space, and what was contributed by gravity, Samantha Cooley- And what was contributed by the other factors.

99Samantha Cooley- Without the centrifuge, Samantha Cooley- Sharmila wouldn't be able to conduct her research properly.

100Samantha Cooley- But things don't always go according to plan.

101Samantha Cooley- Every now and then, just like it does on Earth, things don't go the way that it's been scripted.

102Samantha Cooley- It turned out that the motor couldn't quite get the centrifuge started.

103Samantha Cooley- It was one of those small glitches that one could not predict, you know, that just that one time, the centrifuge decided it was not going to turn on.

104Samantha Cooley- So Samantha started troubleshooting, Samantha Cooley- Seeing if anything was in the way of the centrifuge that could be stopping its motion.

105Samantha Cooley- And the whole time she was communicating her process with people on the ground.

106Samantha Cooley- Can't blend back on three for the centrifuge?

107Samantha Cooley- Yes, I am.

108What did you find out?

109Samantha Cooley- We didn't really see anything conclusive.

110Samantha Cooley- Copy all the same.

111I think you've done as much as you can.

112Samantha Cooley- No luck there.

113But Samantha Cooley- Samantha Cooley- Samantha Cooley- Samantha Cooley- I would have to kind of like find a way to go in and attach this piece of tape.

114Samantha Cooley- She stuck it on the side of the centrifuge.

115Samantha Cooley- You know, kind of threading it out and re-closed the rag.

116Samantha Cooley- And she gave it a yank.

117Samantha Cooley- A real nice pull.

118Samantha Cooley- Just the way you would kickstart your lawnmower.

119Samantha Cooley- And she got the centrifuge going, it turned, and there was no problem with the centrifuge thereafter.

120Samantha Cooley- It looks like it's working fine now.

121Samantha Cooley- On behalf of all the little fruit flies, we thank you.

122Samantha Cooley- The fruit flies and the scientists were thankful for Samantha's quick thinking.

123Samantha Cooley- Having the astronauts there to help us was a critical part of being able to do more complicated science, to get higher science yield out of the science that you were doing.

124And also, frankly, they were incredible Samantha Cooley- As people who were there to troubleshoot your experiment should you need anything.

125Samantha Cooley- The human ingenuity and the ability to think on the fly is why humans will stay aboard the orbital outpost for many years to come.

126Samantha Cooley- People sometimes make it a little bit too easy when they say, Samantha Cooley- We can replace all that by robots or we can do all that automatically.

127Maybe, possibly, you could do that.

128But then you really need to hope that you predicted everything, that nothing is going to go wrong.

129Samantha Cooley- It's the humans that make the space station, not the equipment itself.

130The people that, for the past 20 years, have been in space and on the ground designing experiments and making sure everything goes smoothly.

131Together, they've made scientific discoveries about heart health, bone loss, growing plants in space, material science, and they've worked on over 3,000 research projects.

132Samantha Cooley- But there will be many more discoveries to come.

133Samantha Cooley- We've been doing genetics for, you know, a little over 100 years.

134If you compare with the fact that we've been doing research on the International Space Station as a laboratory for less than 20 years, we have a lot more information that we're going to find out.

135A lot more information that we're going to need to find out as well, in order to get us prepared for long-term exploration.

136Samantha Cooley- I mean, I think, frankly, that right now, we are just at the tip of the iceberg.

137Samantha Cooley- What we've learned in the past 20 years goes even beyond the science.

138It gets to the heart of what makes us human.

139Dreaming big and making those dreams a reality through collaboration.

140Samantha Cooley- For the past 20 years, we have been a space-faring civilization, which is, you know, something that when you say it, you kind of have to stop and let it sink in and realize that it really shouldn't be taken for granted.

141Samantha Cooley- I have great respect and admiration for the previous achievements of the past, you know, Apollo and the space shuttle and so on.

142But, you know, people should not think that the space station is less than that.

143You know, we have demonstrated as a community for 20 years, we've shown every day that it is possible to live in space with continuity, without interruption.

144Samantha Cooley- With an international community.

145And I don't know how many people would have bet 20-25 years ago that it was going to work in the end so smoothly.

146Samantha Cooley- For me, it's just humbling to think that I had the privilege of being part for a short time of this amazing success story.

147Samantha Cooley- For me, it's just humbling to think that I had the privilege of being part for a short time of this amazing success story.

148Samantha Cooley- For me, it's just humbling to think that I had the privilege of being part for a short time of this amazing success story.

149Samantha Cooley- For me, it's just humbling to think that I had the privilege of being part for a short time of this amazing success story.

150Samantha Cooley- During her stay on the orbiting laboratory, Samantha traveled 84 million miles and helped oversee almost 100 experiments.

151Samantha Cooley- Sharmila continues to launch fruit flies into space, where the latest rotation of station astronauts are there to greet them.

152Samantha Cooley- Most of us won't make it onto the space station.

153Samantha Cooley- But that doesn't mean we can't see it.

154Samantha Cooley- The big array of solar panels that power the station reflect some of the sun's light.

155Samantha Cooley- That means around dusk or dawn, you may be able to see it, zooming through the sky.

156Samantha Cooley- Humanity's outpost and laboratory in space.

157Samantha Cooley- A global collaboration that persists through conflict.

158Samantha Cooley- A beacon of hope.

159Samantha Cooley- This is NASA's Curious Universe.

160Samantha Cooley- This episode was written and produced by Margot Wohl.

161Samantha Cooley- Our executive producer is Katie Atkinson.

162Samantha Cooley- The Curious Universe team includes Maddie Arnold, Michaela Sosby, and Vicki Woodburn.

163Samantha Cooley- Special thanks to Erin Anthony, Rachel Barry, Ryland Hegey, Nicole Rose, the International Space Station Research Integration Office, and the European Space Agency.

164Samantha Cooley- To keep up with current space station research, follow the at ISS underscore research on Twitter.

165Samantha Cooley- If you liked this episode, please let us know by leaving us a review, tweeting about the show at NASA, and sharing with a friend.

166Samantha Cooley- Still curious about NASA?

167Samantha Cooley- You can send us questions about this episode, or a previous one, and we'll try to track down the answers.

168Samantha Cooley- You can email a voice recording, or send a written note to NASA-CuriousUniverse at mail.nasa.gov.

169Samantha Cooley- Go to nasa.gov slash curiousuniverse for more information.

170Samantha Cooley- Hey, Curious Universe listeners.

171I'm Gary Jordan from NASA's Houston We Have a Podcast.

172Samantha Cooley- I hope you enjoyed this first episode of the new season of Curious Universe.

173Samantha Cooley- We have some more great content coming your way, so make sure you're subscribed to Curious Universe to get the latest when they post.

174Samantha Cooley- Maybe this episode has scratched an itch, and you're dying for more space between your ears this month.

175Samantha Cooley- Well, you're in luck, because Houston We Have a Podcast has some special content coming up just for you.

176Samantha Cooley- This week and next, we're diving into the Crew-1 mission, the first crew rotation mission to the International Space Station on the SpaceX Crew Dragon.

177Samantha Cooley- We're talking with the astronauts flying on the spacecraft and the flight director that's leading the operations from Mission Control in Houston.

178Samantha Cooley- And we'll be posting double episodes, that's right, two episodes per week, for the weeks leading up to the 20th anniversary of continuous human presence on the International Space Station coming up later this month.

179Samantha Cooley- Stay up to date with us by subscribing to Houston We Have a Podcast on your favorite podcast app, or find us and other NASA podcasts at nasa.gov slash podcasts.

180Samantha Cooley- We have a podcast on your favorite podcast app, or find us and other NASA podcasts at nasa.gov slash podcasts.

181Samantha Cooley- We have a podcast on your favorite podcast app, or find us and other podcast.