SpaceX CRS-16: Dragon Capsule Delivers Student Experiments to the ISS

The U.S. National Laboratory on the International Space Station (ISSInternational Space Station) is enabling a revolution in microgravityThe condition of perceived weightlessness created when an object is in free fall, for example when an object is in orbital motion. Microgravity alters many observable phenomena within the physical and life sciences, allowing scientists to study things in ways not possible on Earth. The International Space Station provides access to a persistent microgravity environment. research by opening up the ISS to a wide range of potential researchers, including middle and high school students! The SpaceX Dragon capsule that launched on December 5 carried eight education payloads along with 5,000 pounds of other cargo. It reached the ISS on December 7, and some of the student experiments are already underway this week!

Helping students send these experiments to space is a major way that the ISS National Lab achieves one of its core goals: to engage and excite the next generation of scientists and explorers.

Marvel Winner, Team Groot: Aeroponic Farming in Microgravity

Experimenters: Sarina Kopf, Stella Meillon Katie Harrington, Maxwell Zines, Josef Michelsen (grades 10-12)
School: Warren Tech and Lakewood High School, Lakewood, CO
Program: Guardians of the Galaxy Space Station Challenge
Commercial Service ProviderImplementation Partners that own and operate commercial facilities for the support of research on the ISS or are developing future facilities.: Space Tango

This experiment seeks to explore an alternative method for watering plants in the absence of gravity. Aeroponic farming utilizes a misting device to deliver water to the plant roots and an air pump to blow excess water off of the roots. In space, aeroponic farming has advantages over other methods of watering plants that are gravity dependent. The project aims to test mister behavior in microgravity—specifically, how the water behaves immediately after it is ejected from the head of the nozzle and how moving air affects the water on the roots in the absence of gravity. Too much water is just as bad for plants as too little water, and root rot from over-watering can be a problem when growing plants in space. Results from this experiment may have profound implications for both the future of spaceflight and for life on Earth by enabling humans to grow fruits and vegetables in microgravity, thus eliminating a major obstacle for long-term spaceflight.

Marvel Winner, Team Rocket: Staying Healthy in Space

Student Lead: Adia Bulawa (grade 12)
School: Greeneville High School, Greeneville, TN
Program: Guardians of the Galaxy Space Station Challenge
Commercial Service Provider: NanoRacks (in collaboration with education partner DreamUp)

Staying healthy in space is extremely important. A broken tooth or a lost filling is painful on Earth, but in space, it can be detrimental to an astronaut’s health. This experiment intends to analyze the effectiveness in microgravity of a dental glue that is activated by ultraviolet (UV) light. The team proposes to treat simulated, broken teeth with the dental glue, expose them to UV light, and observe them onboard the space station. Soldering in microgravity results in weaker bonds due to air bubbles, and the team wonders whether the same will happen with UV-activated glue.

Drinking Coffee in Space: The Impact of Microgravity on Streptococcus mutans’ Susceptibility to Coffee

Experimenters: Olivia Rothenberg, Sophie Muncie, Brayden Hall, Connor Raskin, Adam Simpson, Luke Rigdon, Chaya Rubinstein, Isobel Salters, Skyler Verkouteren, Fintan Harwood, and Kallie Verkouteren (grades 5-12)
Schools:  iLEAD charter schools including Santa Clarita Valley International (SCVI) High School, Castaic, CA
Program: DreamUp
Commercial Service Provider: NanoRacks

The iLEAD DreamUp 2018 Launch Team is named for the iLEAD (International, Leadership, Entrepreneurial development, Arts, Design thinking) community of charter schools in California and Ohio. These middle and high school students developed an experiment inspired by the question: “Can drinking coffee in space help astronauts have better oral hygiene?”

On Earth, drinking regular coffee slows or halts the growth of Streptococcus mutans, a type of bacteria in the mouth that is known to cause tooth decay. The students want to test whether microgravity changes the way S. mutans responds to coffee. In past ISS experiments, exposure to microgravity has made some types of bacteria change their rates of metabolism and growth.

The students have prepared two tube-shaped fluids mixing enclosure tubes (also called MixStix), each with three chambers. One end-chamber contains a small disc filled with dried S. mutans bacteria. The middle chamber has a nutrient-rich liquid that simulates saliva. The other end-chamber contains freeze-dried coffee powder.

One of the MixStix tubes stays on the ground and the other flies to the ISS. When the flight tube arrives onboard the space station, the clamps separating the chambers will be opened in a specific order. First, the bacteria will be combined with the liquid and allowed to grow for two days. Then the coffee will be added to that mixture. After one more day, the mixture will be cooled to near freezing to stop all bacterial growth.

When the iLEAD team gets the flight tube back, the students will compare the concentrations of bacteria in the flight and ground experiments.

Evaluation of Radiotrophic Fungi as a Potential Radiation Barrier

Experimenters: Graham Shunk, Xavier Gomez, Srikar Kaligotla, Jamison Fuller, and Finn Poulin
Schools: Multiple high schools in the Durham, NC area
Program: Go For Launch! by Higher Orbits

Commercial Service Provider: Space Tango

Team Orion, a group of high school students near Durham, North Carolina, has designed an experiment that takes advantage of two aspects of the ISS environment: microgravity and increased radiation. The team is studying Cladosporium sphaerospermum, a species of radiotrophic fungi that can harness radiation to produce energy for its cells. The experiment will observe how well C. sphaerospermum can grow and absorb ionizing radiation in microgravity.

Orbiting above Earth’s atmosphere, the ISS receives slightly more radiation than Earth’s surface does. It’s not enough to make astronauts sick, even after a year of exposure. However, voyaging to the moon, Mars, or beyond will take astronauts outside not just Earth’s atmosphere, but also Earth’s magnetic field. This will expose astronauts to more intense radiation from both the sun and other objects in the galaxy such as supernovae. Several types of high-energy radiation, collectively called ionizing radiation, can damage DNA and increase the risk of cancer and other diseases.

All of our spacecraft, including the modules of the ISS, are built with some radiation shielding. But a long-distance space mission would require more robust shielding to protect the crew from dangerous levels of exposure. For a crewed mission to Mars, it will be important to develop lightweight materials that block and/or absorb radiation.

One possible radiation-shielding material is a living fungus! Based on Team Orion’s concept, Space Tango technicians developed an experiment that fits into a 10-centimeter CubeLab. The radiotrophic fungus C. sphaerospermum grows on a nutrient-rich, gel-like growth medium in a Petri dish. A detector will measure two types of ionizing radiation: gamma rays and X-rays. Existing sensors on the space station measure the ambient radiation for comparison. A small camera in the CubeLab will take a picture of the dish once a day for 30 days.

This photo from December 2017 shows Mark Vande Hei attaching modular CubeLabs (boxes) onto a Tangolab card (large panel) onboard the ISS. The housing for Team Orion’s experiment looks just like the silver CubeLab decorated with the rocket-shaped Go For Launch! sticker.

Media Credit: NASANational Aeronautics and Space Administration

If this radiotrophic fungus shows potential as a radiation barrier, it could be useful not only in space but also back on Earth—for example, as radiation shielding for people who work at nuclear power plants or clean up radioactively contaminated sites.

ARCUS Protein – Making the Cut – In Space

Experimenters: A large team of middle school students
School: Immaculata Catholic School
Programs: DreamUp and Space Center University
Commercial Service Partner: NanoRacks

Middle school students designed a DNA experiment through a collaboration among Immaculata Catholic School in Durham, North Carolina, Space Center Houston, and Precision BioSciences. Space Center University at Space Center Houston offers five-day programs for students and educators that include activities about designing experiments for space.

This experiment deals with genome editing—an important technique in cutting-edge medical research to treat chronic, non-infectious diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

Precision BioSciences’ ARCUS system uses the synthetic enzyme ARC nuclease to attach to a target location on a DNA molecule and insert, delete, or modify DNA at that spot. In the students’ experiment, ARC nuclease will be used to cut a DNA plasmid (a ring-shaped DNA molecule) so it behaves like a linear strand. This process is just one step in genome editing; the students chose it because it is fairly simple to do and easy to measure. The process works in ground-based experiments but has not yet been tested in microgravity.

What’s really special about this experiment is that the procedure on the ISS is only the first phase. The next phase will involve hundreds of people in citizen science! Space Center Houston plans to demonstrate the experiment in a Pop-Up Science Lab about genetics. Pop-Up Labs are guided hands-on activities for the public with themes such as Roving Robotics, Laser and Light Challenges, and Foam Rocket Fun with Newton’s Laws. The news about this student-designed ISS experiment will be an exciting starting point for the public to learn about DNA and engage in conversations about how genome editing should (or should not) be used in humans.

Bacterial Production of Recombinant Proteins in Microgravity

Experimenters: Raychel Kool, Emma Grooms, Emma Stone
School: Craft Academy for Excellence in Science and Mathematics at Morehead State University
Program: Blast Off summer program
Commercial Service Partner: Space Tango

At the Blast Off summer science camp offered by Craft Academy at Morehead State University, high school students learn about exomedicine: the study of how biological processes are affected by microgravity, shedding light on what new or modified medical treatments may be needed for astronauts during spaceflight. Blast Off participants compete in teams to design an experiment to send to the ISS. This year’s winning experiment, designed by students from Kentucky and Ohio, examines the production of recombinant proteins by genetically engineered bacteria.

The students want to see if microgravity affects the rate at which bacteria make a recombinant protein. They are using E. coli bacteria (one of many E. coli strains that are harmless to humans) engineered to make Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP). The amount of GFP the bacteria produce will determine how intensely the sample fluoresces under ultraviolet light.

The team will do a ground-based experiment with the same type of bacteria and compare it with the results from the ISS. This research could be a first step toward studies of genetic modification and the production of medically important proteins in space.

Craft Academy is partnering with Space Tango to build and fly this experiment. The same collaboration sent a student-designed experiment to the ISS on SpaceX CRS-10 in February 2017.

Growth of Assorted Microgreens in Microgravity

Experimenters: Kaitlyn Palumbo and Kimberly Bosh
School: Craft Academy for Excellence in Science and Mathematics at Morehead State University
Program: ExoLab on the ISS by Magnitude.io
Commercial Service Provider: Space Tango

This experiment is part of the innovative educational program ExoLab on the ISS, which engages thousands of middle school and high school students with real science on the space station. The ExoLab hardware is a self-contained plant growth system developed by Magnitude.io. The mini-laboratory sends near-real-time data to schools where students conduct identical experiments in classroom versions of the ExoLab. The students’ experiments serve as ground-based control experiments. Students can also recreate past ISS experiments or even make up their own experiments in their classroom ExoLabs.

This student-designed experiment is a follow-up to an ExoLab experiment that went to the ISS in April 2018 but did not go as planned. Its Arabidopsis plants died within two weeks, probably from overheating and dehydration. The new experiment uses heat-tolerant plants: purslane, amaranth, extra dwarf pak choi, and wasabi. They are all microgreens, which have high nutrient concentrations even as small shoots. These compact health foods are ideal for a spacecraft garden.

Research using the ExoLab could provide insight into space-based plant cultivation for food and oxygen on future long-duration space missions. Understanding how plants respond to stressful environments such as microgravity also has applications in crop science, basic biology, and horticulture on Earth.

DreamKit: Plants in Space

Project Lead: Carl Carruthers
Program: DreamUp
Commercial Service Provider: NanoRacks

DreamUp and BASF Corporation (the U.S. affiliate of Germany-based BASF SE) developed a Plants in Space experiment for the ISS that connects to an activity kit for educators and learners. DreamKits come with supplies, activity guides, and access to ISS data, letting learners compare their classroom-based experiments with certain space-based experiments.

On Earth, a plant’s shoots and roots grow in opposite directions—upward and downward, respectively. In microgravity, there’s no “up” or “down,” but that doesn’t prevent plants from growing in space. If plants on the ISS are exposed to directional light, the shoots grow toward the light and the roots grow roughly opposite the shoots. But that word “roughly” denotes a puzzling difference. In experiments with Arabidopsis plants, instead of growing exactly opposite the shoots’ direction, the roots always skewed to one side.

It has been suggested that different colors of light could affect the rate and direction of plants’ growth in microgravity. Plants absorb more light in the red part of the spectrum than the blue part. Plants in Space will investigate whether arugula (Eruca sativa) seeds germinate in mostly blue light and if the color of light affects the direction of the roots. Half of the samples have clear media and half contain a blue dye to diminish red light availability. Details about the plant growth will be observed, including the length and direction of roots and stems, the number of leaves, and the angular deviation from linear growth.

DreamKits provide an inexpensive way for learners to engage with real research on the ISS. The first kit, Germs in Space, is available for purchase through DreamUp’s website. The second kit, Crystal Growth, is being developed using data from a recent ISS-based experiment. Plants in Space will be the third DreamKit.