Science Launching to Space Station Looks Forward and Back
The Cold Atom Laboratory, from JPL, is one science payload launching to the International Space Station aboard an Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft no earlier than May 20.
Includes Cold Atom Lab
from JPLSome of the
earliest human explorers used mechanical tools called sextants to navigate vast
oceans and discover new lands. Today, high-tech tools navigate microscopic DNA
to discover previously unidentified organisms. Scientists aboard theInternational Space Stationsoon will have both types of tools at
their disposal.Orbital ATK's
Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to launch its ninth contracted cargo resupply
mission to the space station no earlier than May 20. Science and research delivered
by the spacecraft include a test of centuries-old sextant navigation and
forward-thinking work advancing the orbiting lab's ability to support
cutting-edge molecular research and its commercial capabilities.Sextant navigationFor centuries,
sailors navigated with sextants, which have an optical sight to take precise
angle measurements from land or sea. NASA's Gemini missions conducted the first
sextant sightings from a spacecraft, and designers built a sextant into Apollo
vehicles as a lost-communications navigation backup. Jim Lovell demonstrated on
Apollo 8 that sextant navigation could return a space vehicle home.TheSextant Navigationinvestigation tests use of a hand-held
sextant for emergency navigation on missions in deep space as humans begin to
travel farther from Earth. The ability to sight angles between the moon or
planets and stars offers crews another option to find their way home if
communications and main computers are compromised."No need to
reinvent the wheel when it comes to celestial navigation," says Principal Investigator
Greg Holt. "We want a robust, mechanical back-up with as few parts and as
little need for power as possible to get you back home safely."Gene sequencingThe remoteness
and constrained resources of living in space require simple but effective
processes and procedures to monitor the presence of microbial life, some of
which might be harmful.Biomolecule
Extraction and Sequencing Technology (BEST) advances the use of sequencing processes to identify
microbes aboard the space station that current methods cannot detect and to
assess mutations in the microbial genome that may be due to spaceflight.Genes in Space 3performed in-flight identification of
bacteria on the station for the first time. BEST takes that one step farther,
says Principal iInvestigator Sarah Wallace, identifying unknown microbial
organisms using a process that sequences directly from a sample with minimal
preparation, rather than with the traditional technique that requires growing a
culture from the sample. "That way, we can identify microbes that cannot be
detected using traditional culturing methods, and we aren't increasing the
number of potential pathogens that might be present on the station," Wallace
explains.Adding these
new processes to the proven technology opens new avenues for inflight research,
such as how microorganisms on the space station change or adapt to spaceflight."With small
modifications to our process, you can pretty much do any type of sequencing on
the station," says Wallace. "Until now, we had to bring samples back to the
ground to see these changes. We know gene expression changes, but freezing a
sample and bringing it back to the ground could result in alterations that are not
caused by the spaceflight environment. If we could look at it while on the
station, it might look very different. There is so much to be gained from that
real-time snapshot of gene expression. I think it will be key to a lot of
research."The
investigation's sequencing components provide important information on the
station's microbial occupants, including which organisms are present and how
they respond to the spaceflight environment -- insight that could help protect
humans during future space exploration. Knowledge gained from BEST could also
provide new ways to monitor the presence of microbes in remote locations on
Earth.Keeping coolMoving on to
science at a scale even smaller than a microbe, the new Cold Atom Lab (CAL) facility could help answer some big questions in modern
physics. CAL creates a temperature 10 billion times colder than the vacuum of
space, then uses lasers and magnetic forces to slow down atoms until they are
almost motionless. CAL makes it possible to observe these ultra-cold atoms for
much longer in the microgravity environment on the space station than would be
possible on the ground. Results of this research could potentially lead to a
number of improved technologies, including sensors, quantum computers and
atomic clocks used in spacecraft navigation. The Cold Atom Laboratory was
designed and built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
It is sponsored by the International Space Station Program at NASA's Johnson
Space Center in Houston, and the Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and
Applications (SLPSRA) Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations
Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.ICE cubesThe
International Commercial Experiment, orICE
Cubes Service, tests
and commissions the first European commercial system to increase access to this
unique lab. A partnership between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Space Application Services
(SpaceAps), ICE Cubes uses a sliding framework permanently installed in the
Columbus module and "plug-and-play" Experiment Cubes. The Experiment Cubes are
easy to install and remove, come in different sizes and can be built with
commercial off-the-shelf components, significantly reducing the cost and time
to develop experiments."The idea is to
provide fast, direct and affordable access to space for research, technology
and education for any organization or customer," says Hilde Stenuit of
SpaceAps, which designed and developed the facility and made it flight-ready.ICE Cubes
removes barriers that limit access to space, providing more people access to
flight opportunities. Potential fields of research range from pharmaceutical
development to experiments on stem cells, radiation, and microbiology, fluid
sciences, and more.For daily
updates on the science happening aboard the space station, follow @ISS_Research,Space
Station Research and Technology News,
orFacebook. For opportunities to see the
International Space Station pass over your town, check outSpot
the Station.