BioServe Microscope

Facility Description

The BioServe Microscope (flight-certified variant of the Nikon Eclipse TS100) is a professional inverted microscope allowing for brightfield, phase-contrast, and polarized light microscopy, specially modified for use on ISSInternational Space Station. Several objective lenses are already on ISS and ready for use, additional objectives and other add-ons can be flown on a per-experiment basis. The Microscope is paired with the SABL Camera (Allied Vision GX1910C), an industrial machine vision camera capable of full, high-definition imaging (1920×1080), 60 FPS raw video, and 36-bit color depth. As needed, other camera models may be used to fulfill experiment-specific imaging requirements (higher resolution, FPS, or IR-capability). This imaging capability is supported by SABL, BioServe’s smart incubator, which provides the crew with a user-friendly interface for the camera that allows them to view the camera’s output, capture images, and record video. Images from the camera are then received in real-time at BioServe’s Payload Operations and Command Center (POCC) allowing the science team to assess the image quality and instruct the crew, as necessary, to achieve the best quality images and videos. Images can be streamed from our POCC to remote teams located across the world in real-time.