Hi, I'm NASA astronaut Kayla Barron
and I'm ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer
and Kayla thanks for taking the time today.
Just a few weeks ago you installed this fancy device which is right behind me,
which is an electron microscope and for me as a material scientist an electron microscope,
it's a giant leap here on the Space Station.
For the first time we have a microscope
that allows us to look really into the tiny details.
Well it's been a real pleasure actually to be up here with material scientists
because I think I've learned a lot from hearing the things that you've been working on and
are interested in and I know one thing that we all think is really cool is you brought up some cool
spoons that are actually testing how you can use different metals to make them antimicrobial
and safer for us. Will you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, I can. It's a new way to structure the surface of materials.
So basically we have a stainless steel spoon, we have a copper spoon
and we also have in a sub experiment also a brass surface that is also treated similarly.
And we know that all these materials are used for applications
where you want to have little microbial growth.
But these spoons are very special because they have in addition a surface structuring.
A laser treatment with a Femto laser.
You can create a very fine pattern on the surface
and this pattern is tailored to kill microbes and the idea is,
in a public environment, let's say especially now in a pandemic,
if you have an elevator, a button or like a door handle in a hospital,
all these surfaces are frequently touched by people. You can transmit microbes from one
person to the other and by using modern materials you hopefully can stop this transmission
and we also want to test this here in space because space is a
way more challenging environment.
The microbes mutate faster, we have a different wetting behavior of liquids on the surface
and yeah, so it's a challenging environment.
If it works here it should also work on the ground.
Yeah, absolutely. I've been having fun nerding out with you about the possible
applications of the scanning electron microscope we have now. Right now it's kind of in the
technology demonstration phase proving that we can do it
but as a material scientist, what are some of the applications
that you've thought of for either Space Station or future missions?
Well, sometimes stuff breaks up here and we had in our Columbus module
for example a valve that failed and we had corrosion.
So, instead of flying the failed device back to the ground and like packing it or handling
it with the highest caution because we don't know exactly is this corrosion toxic or not,
we could take a tiny little part being fully protected,
put this in the electron microscope, analyze it
and then see like, ok, it's not such a toxic particle and then we can handle it with less,
I would not say less care, but we don't need to go all out on the protection measures.
And maybe we don't even need to fly back the device. Maybe the engineers on the ground say:
Ok, if it's that corrosion product we understand the process
and you can repair and fix it, clean it by using this and this method.
So I think it will help our way how we handle problems up here in space
but also for analyzing certain samples that we produce up here in space.
You know that we take biological samples and we freeze them, we send them back down
to avoid that there are changes in the biology but what if there are still changes?
Having now an electron microscope up here, we could actually do some first tests up here.
Then we can run experiments up here, do a first test in the electron microscope and then we have
a first baseline and we can fly the samples back and have better machines on the ground,
analyze the stuff again and see like, ok, there are no changes.
Our transport method, our way of fixation, the samples,
it's rock solid and we can continue this way.
Speaking of rocks, actually I was thinking about
one application we were talking about the other day
which is how cool would it be to have a scanning
electron microscope like this in a future lunar laboratory?
Maybe you can imagine having a lunar habitat
from which we're conducting some cool geology research.
We go out, collect samples, but we have a limited capability to send them home
to scientists on the ground who are real experts in this
and who have access to all of the amazing equipment we have on Earth.
And it would be really interesting to take key samples,
put them in a scanning electron microscope like this one
and send those images back to the ground for a quick analysis where they can decide:
Ah ,we think we've seen that before or that's new,
we'd really like to get a big sample of that back in person.
So, that'd be a cool application for Artemis.
Hopefully we'll get to maybe run one of these on the Moon one day.
Yeah, it's absolutely a spot-on on the problem and on the application and you know
the second sample that we put in there, you put the first sample in there, but the first sample
that I was allowed to put in there after you was a sample from a Mars meteoroid.
So, basically we tested already here in space to analyze a sample from a different planet
and it still gives me goosebumps as a material scientists
to know that something came from a different planet landed on our planet,
we brought it back to space and analyzed it here. So I think this is really groundbreaking and
well, it's like I really love this small little machine.
It will open a lot of doors for new possibilities.
Absolutely, I can't wait to see more of those scans
as the scientists work through all the research up here.
Excellent. Well, with this I think we can conclude.
Many thanks for joining us today, many thanks Kayla.
It's always a pleasure talking with you and, yeah, I think we will find more topics
that we can communicate to our fans on the ground. Goodbye!