>> Julie Robinson: So for Expedition 35/36, I'm just going
to give you some brief highlights
of a few select investigations.
Overall, we have just in Kibo, Columbus, and Destiny,
we'll have 137 investigations active during Expedition 35
and 36.
Eighty of those are led by U.S. funded
or U.S. supported investigators.
About 25 percent of our investigations are sponsored
under the declaration of ISS as a national laboratory.
This started back in 2005
when we were declared a national laboratory by Congress,
and that represents our users that are
from other government agencies, commercial companies,
the private sector, and nonprofit organizations,
so they're not funded by NASA.
We're also serving the needs of over 400 investigators
from around the world, and those investigators represent 28
different countries.
And you saw in the graphic that was up,
those colors represented the different disciplines,
and so we have biology and biotechnology,
Earth and space sciences, education
and cultural activities, human research focused
on human physiology, and future exploration, physical sciences,
and technology development and demonstration.
So with that number of investigations,
obviously I can't give you a very detailed rundown of most
of them, what I did was select five investigations covering
that breadth of disciplines linked to some
of our past research results, and that are kind of new
in this -- starting up in Expedition 35.
So the first thing I want to talk about is
from the biology area, and it's called microbiome.
Some recent discoveries over the last few years
in the microbial sciences have shown us that bacteria account
for basically 10 times more cells
in our body than our own cells.
So we're out numbered 10 to 1 everywhere we go,
by the bacteria that we carry with us.
And we know that in space flight,
bacteria grow quite differently.
We also know that the human immune system is
affected significantly.
And so what we'll be doing
in this project is collecting samples
from ISS crew members before, during, and after their missions
to the ISS, and also looking at the environment of the ISS
and the diet and other aspects,
other ways that humans have bacteria come
into their systems.
And we'll be looking at their stress levels
and their immune system function, as well.
It's important from an exploration perspective,
because this research will help us predict how long-term space
travel, which is basically humans and the microbes that go
with us, is going to affect those communities,
those ecological communities.
But also, it's really important
because it's addressing the top recommendation
of the National Academies of Sciences last year
when they suggested that ISS needed to be developed
as a microbial observatory to address some
of these new findings that have been made
across the scientific community.
And so this is one of the first studies
that really starts addressing that recommendation.
And that's important, because of the benefits back here on Earth.
If we can understand how microbial communities work
and take advantage of the ISS
as a relatively isolated environment, there's a lot
of basic science and then improvements in health
on Earth that we can make.
Moving to human physiology,
we have a new investigation starting
in Expedition 35 called ocular health.
And this is an important investigation,
because it builds off a discovery made
through our space medicine about two years ago.
It will be the first experiment to characterize the risk
of what we're now calling microgravity-induced visual
impairment and intracranial pressure.
Essentially, what we've discovered is that astronauts,
some astronauts on orbit, not all of them,
but they have real changes in fluid shifts in their bodies,
and that that leads them to both have changes in their vision,
and also changes in the pressure in their central nervous system.
About 20 percent of the astronauts that have flown
to the International Space Station have reported these
kinds of vision changes.
So what we're going to be doing is taking detailed
scientific measurements.
Here you see Suni having some tomography measurements taken
of her eye.
You may have had something like this in a doctor 's office
where you have some anesthetizing eyedrops,
and then they use that direct contact to tap
and actually measure the pressure
of the fluid that's inside the eye.
You also saw some video of ultrasounds,
and here's another instrument being used
to characterize the eye.
So we'll be taking systematic measurements to really try
and understand this process for the first time.
This is an example of why we really need long duration human
space flight with multiple crew members
to understand all the different effects on the human body.
But it's also interesting that this is a process
that was not predicted from what we know
about human health on Earth.
And we even have some results now that have come
out that suggest that what we're seeing in astronauts
in orbit could link to ways
of understanding cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure,
and other aspects in people on Earth that might not be quite
as healthy as our astronauts are in orbit.
And so we're really excited
to have this important study kicking off.
It will take place over about two years.
Next, I want to shift from human physiology focused
on exploration to technology demonstration focused
on exploration.
And really, just yesterday on ISS,
we started a study called UBNT,
or Ultrasonic Background Noise Test.
This test is to observe the high frequency noise levels
that are background on the International Space Station,
and develop an understanding of what those noise levels are,
so that we can then develop a tool
to automatically detect leaks.
You can think of a leak as having some kind
of a hissing noise, and these ultrasonic detectors,
and you see a training video here
of someone putting the epoxy on one of these detectors
and actually attaching it onto the space behind a rack.
And basically what the acoustic engineers will be doing is
developing a profile of what normal noises are
like inside the ISS, and then they'll be able
to start developing algorithms to detect abnormal noises,
including the kind of noises you have might get
if there's air leaking through the pressure wall.
And so this will be an important advance in the way
that we approach spacecraft safety and leak detection
for future exploration missions.
Next, I'll shift from technology demonstration
to a more fundamental physical process, and that is combustion.
Last year, we had a really neat discovery
in our combustion rack, and based on one
of the combustion experiments we were doing,
where we were burning very simple fuels,
in this case, heptane drops.
And this was from an experiment called FLEX.
It was the first time
that scientists had observed a low temperature,
soot-free, cool flame.
Now, cool flame sounds kind of strange.
A normal flame is about 1400 degrees Celsius,
and a cool flame is about 600-degrees Celsius.
We have a video to show you from the inside
of the combustion rack
that shows you what this observation is.
So you see the droplet, the droplet is ignited,
and you see the burning go on.
Then you'll see an extinction where it gets dark, it goes out.
But the flame, the burning actually continues,
and then in the end you can see
that through a chemiluminescent afterglow
that comes back afterwards, and so that's how scientists know
that the flame continued to burn.
So this has really important applications on Earth,
because this is something you just can't study any other way.
This kind of droplet staying in one place and being controllable
and measurable without having convention drawing a flame
upward in the point that we normally see,
say when we're burning a candle on Earth,
this is a fundamental property
of combustion you can only study in space.
And this gives us some insights and some ways
to improve internal combustion engines, because this kind
of cool flame property, if you can control it better on Earth,
would help you to control combustion in a way
that could make engines more fuel efficient.
The experiment that we'll be starting
in Expedition 35 is a follow
on to the FLEX investigation data I just showed you.
It's called the Italian Combustion Experiment
for Green Air, or ICE-GA for short,
and here you can see a picture in front of the combustion rack
as a gas bottle is being put in.
And it's a collaboration with the Italian space agency.
Instead of burning things like heptane, decane, or octane,
we'll be looking at second and third generation biofuels.
Second generation biofuels, instead of being made from corn
or soy beans, they're made from any kind of excess biomass,
so they're not competing with food production.
And third generation biofuels are the ones
that are made from algae.
So we'll be testing combustion
in the combustion rack using these different biofuels.
And this is obviously very applied at getting insights
that will help us to improve the efficiency
of combustion with biofuels.
Finally, I'd like to shift to the Earth sciences and talk
about an important Earth science remote sensing instrument
on ISS, the HICO, or Hyperspectral Imager
for the Coastal Ocean.
You can see a picture of that here out on the,
mounted externally on the Kibo laboratory.
Hyperspectral data is essentially hundreds
of spectral bands instead of just a few, like Landsat has.
And so this gives you a lot more information
about what's being observed and measured
on the Earth below the instrument.
As of January 1st, the this instrument has transitioned
from being just a naval research operated payload
for the naval research laboratory, to being a facility
on the International Space Station.
And this opens it up to a wide array of users,
both national lab users from other government agencies,
and the private sector, especially users
that are focused on agribusiness and oil exploration.
And it also opens the instrument up to more access
to our NASA users that are funded
by the Science Mission Directorate in studies
of the Earth's system.
So we're excited about that transition.
And I wanted to close by showing you one example
of what the Environmental Protection Agency has done
with hyperspectral data.
They had a Pathfinder Innovation Project Exploratory Grant
from their office of research and development at EPA,
and this is one of the results of those.
This is Pensacola Bay, Florida.
And if you see the little red parts of that image,
they took data from HICO and they processed it,
and those little red areas represent
where there is significant nitrogen coming into the Bay
and causing blooms of algae, and so they use this
by combining their in-water measurements
with the remote sensing measurements.
They've used it to develop a predictive system
that they can use for monitoring the water quality
in Pensacola Bay.
They're now working to expand this to more bays
around the Gulf Coast region, and even to look
at other EPA regions, and see if they can extend this.
So both the research oceanographers at EPA,
as well as their Office of Research, is continuing
to support expanded use.
So this is the kind of use of HICO
as a national laboratory facility
that really benefits our life here on Earth,
and will also be extended to additional users
because of HICO becoming an ISS facility.
So that summary really just touches the surface.
I urge you to look at the press kit on NASA.gov to see all
of those hundreds of investigations going on.
And we look forward to a really dynamic
and active research expedition.