1 00:00:02,629 --> 00:00:03,629 [ Music ] 2 00:00:03,629 --> 00:00:04,629 >> [Background Music] This is NASA TV. 3 00:00:04,629 --> 00:00:05,629 [ Music ] 4 00:00:05,629 --> 00:00:23,130 >> [Background Music] Here at 5 00:00:23,130 --> 00:00:28,659 NASA Television been observing the 15th Anniversary of the launch of the first few modules of 6 00:00:28,659 --> 00:00:33,079 the International Space Station back in November of 1998. 7 00:00:33,079 --> 00:00:38,100 In this coming February, it will mark the 13th Anniversary of the arrival of the U.S. 8 00:00:38,100 --> 00:00:42,340 Laboratory Destiny to the International Space Station on a space shuttle mission during 9 00:00:42,340 --> 00:00:44,180 Expedition 1. 10 00:00:44,180 --> 00:00:48,050 Now science research has been going on on board the Space Station throughout the assembly 11 00:00:48,050 --> 00:00:53,620 process but now that the assembly is essentially complete the science activity both inside 12 00:00:53,620 --> 00:00:59,020 and outside the Space Station is taking the primary focus of the activity on orbit. 13 00:00:59,020 --> 00:01:04,710 A few months ago, the International Astronautical Federation asked International Space Station 14 00:01:04,710 --> 00:01:10,530 Chief Scientist, Julie Robinson, to share the top 10 research results from the station 15 00:01:10,530 --> 00:01:15,119 at the International Astronautical Congress in Beijing and we're pleased to have her here 16 00:01:15,119 --> 00:01:17,560 today to talk about some of those things. 17 00:01:17,560 --> 00:01:22,450 Julie, I got to start by asking you to tell me about the criteria that you use if you 18 00:01:22,450 --> 00:01:27,969 go thumbing through all of the science and research that's been done over all these years. 19 00:01:27,969 --> 00:01:30,819 What were you looking for to decide what would make a top 10 list? 20 00:01:30,819 --> 00:01:36,289 >> Julie Robinson: Well it's a hard choice and fortunately the leaders of the International 21 00:01:36,289 --> 00:01:40,819 Astronautical Federation said they could say, "Why limit it to so few," so that I could 22 00:01:40,819 --> 00:01:45,859 actually stretch it a little bit if I wanted to which I definitely want to. 23 00:01:45,859 --> 00:01:49,639 But what I focused on was what they asked me to focus on which was research results 24 00:01:49,639 --> 00:01:51,509 and I looked at a couple of criteria. 25 00:01:51,509 --> 00:01:55,759 I looked at research results that had been published in really important scientific journals; 26 00:01:55,759 --> 00:01:58,649 that is always a great measure of a result. 27 00:01:58,649 --> 00:02:02,630 I also looked at research results that were really bringing benefits back here to earth 28 00:02:02,630 --> 00:02:06,340 where there were cases where people's lives have been saved. 29 00:02:06,340 --> 00:02:11,040 Somebody was around today that would have had not been alive or not had a good life 30 00:02:11,040 --> 00:02:14,280 if it hadn't been for some of those research results so I tried to look at both of those 31 00:02:14,280 --> 00:02:15,450 things. 32 00:02:15,450 --> 00:02:20,640 And I also looked at the acknowledgements of their colleagues, so last summer we had 33 00:02:20,640 --> 00:02:27,850 some of the results of the last year selected for awards at the American Astronautical Society, 34 00:02:27,850 --> 00:02:33,330 the AAS domestic meeting that we have, and so I used the inputs of some of the scientists 35 00:02:33,330 --> 00:02:36,570 that voted on those awards as well to help me pick a top 10. 36 00:02:36,570 --> 00:02:39,270 And you know a year from now I'd pick a different top 10 probably... 37 00:02:39,270 --> 00:02:40,709 >> Sure. ...because things are changing fast. 38 00:02:40,709 --> 00:02:46,180 >> Well is the emphasis on brand new things that have been discovered, or as opposed to 39 00:02:46,180 --> 00:02:48,400 finding ways to apply things that we know? 40 00:02:48,400 --> 00:02:52,090 >> Julie Robinson: Well science takes time so you know the first thing that happens is 41 00:02:52,090 --> 00:02:55,650 there will be a publication; sometimes it's not even recognized that that is a groundbreaking 42 00:02:55,650 --> 00:02:57,950 publication until several years later. 43 00:02:57,950 --> 00:03:02,870 So I tried to balance between sort of new, exciting things, but also to look at some 44 00:03:02,870 --> 00:03:07,110 of the things that have been gradually evolving and developing and making things better and 45 00:03:07,110 --> 00:03:10,560 better; growing to be something with great impact. 46 00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:13,760 >> Were some of them pretty obvious picks for you? 47 00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:20,030 >> Julie Robinson: Yeah, I probably have in my own mind a list of my top 30 or 40, and 48 00:03:20,030 --> 00:03:23,030 then I really had to go through those and pick the ones. 49 00:03:23,030 --> 00:03:26,760 There are some that I just feel like everybody needs to know about but then because I restricted 50 00:03:26,760 --> 00:03:32,630 myself to research, I didn't talk about some spin-offs and technologies that we've developed 51 00:03:32,630 --> 00:03:35,460 on the Space Station there are also saving lives all around the world. 52 00:03:35,460 --> 00:03:38,980 So I specifically ground-ruled some of those out and those are great stories in their own 53 00:03:38,980 --> 00:03:39,980 right. 54 00:03:39,980 --> 00:03:44,020 >> That would be at least one of the reasons why you wouldn't have picked the actual assembly 55 00:03:44,020 --> 00:03:46,290 of the station itself as one of the achievements. 56 00:03:46,290 --> 00:03:47,840 >> Julie Robinson: Exactly. 57 00:03:47,840 --> 00:03:52,670 You know the Space Station was built for both advancing, engineering, and our ability to 58 00:03:52,670 --> 00:03:53,670 explore space. 59 00:03:53,670 --> 00:03:58,690 It was also built for international cooperation and peaceful use of space around the world 60 00:03:58,690 --> 00:04:00,260 for all humanity. 61 00:04:00,260 --> 00:04:04,630 And then it was built to be the most amazing research platform we've ever had in low earth 62 00:04:04,630 --> 00:04:05,630 orbit. 63 00:04:05,630 --> 00:04:10,420 And so that third area, the research is my area, but all of those things go together 64 00:04:10,420 --> 00:04:14,340 to produce the whole value that the Space Station provides to the world. 65 00:04:14,340 --> 00:04:21,239 >> How many different research projects, science experiments, technology demonstrations have 66 00:04:21,239 --> 00:04:22,780 run through the system in this time? 67 00:04:22,780 --> 00:04:27,230 >> Julie Robinson: We've had roughly to date about 1,500 investigations that have been 68 00:04:27,230 --> 00:04:31,720 active on the Space Station and that's not counting the multi-user instruments where 69 00:04:31,720 --> 00:04:35,570 hundreds of people might take advantage of the data, say earth remote sensing instruments. 70 00:04:35,570 --> 00:04:40,051 So we've had a large number of investigations that have begun or completed on the space 71 00:04:40,051 --> 00:04:45,510 station and then there's always a lot of ground work that follows that on orbit activity and 72 00:04:45,510 --> 00:04:50,160 we see the publications come out anywhere from 3 months to multiple years after the 73 00:04:50,160 --> 00:04:51,770 on orbit part is completed. 74 00:04:51,770 --> 00:04:54,510 >> And there has been participation literally all over the world? 75 00:04:54,510 --> 00:04:59,280 >> Julie Robinson: Yeah, over 69 countries have participated in some aspect of either 76 00:04:59,280 --> 00:05:01,650 research or education on the Space Station. 77 00:05:01,650 --> 00:05:06,770 So even though the partnership is a partnership of 15 countries, the impact of ISS is truly 78 00:05:06,770 --> 00:05:08,199 global. 79 00:05:08,199 --> 00:05:09,199 >> Let's look at the list. 80 00:05:09,199 --> 00:05:14,600 We go down the list starting at number 10; preventing loss of bone mass in space through 81 00:05:14,600 --> 00:05:17,300 diet and exercise. 82 00:05:17,300 --> 00:05:21,620 That sounds to me...that is something that was all ready a point of interest before the 83 00:05:21,620 --> 00:05:23,000 International Space Station, right? 84 00:05:23,000 --> 00:05:26,690 >> Julie Robinson: You could go clear back to the Gemini missions and people were worried 85 00:05:26,690 --> 00:05:30,900 about bone loss in astronauts because all that floating around means there's no forces 86 00:05:30,900 --> 00:05:35,430 on your bones and people knew that that would probably cause astronauts to lose bone right 87 00:05:35,430 --> 00:05:37,520 at the beginning of human space flight. 88 00:05:37,520 --> 00:05:42,390 What's exciting to me -- and this is why it was also on the cover of the major bone journal 89 00:05:42,390 --> 00:05:46,320 in the country, the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research -- what's exciting to me about it 90 00:05:46,320 --> 00:05:51,740 is that when you study astronauts, you've got otherwise incredibly healthy, strong, 91 00:05:51,740 --> 00:05:57,290 fit people and they go into space and they have this challenge and they lose bone. 92 00:05:57,290 --> 00:06:02,610 And what we found after 15 years of research on the Space Station -- we started studying 93 00:06:02,610 --> 00:06:07,200 bone in Expedition 1, the very first crew member -- it has taken us several generations 94 00:06:07,200 --> 00:06:12,300 of studies, but we have actually found a recipe where if you have the right exercise regime 95 00:06:12,300 --> 00:06:17,380 which includes high intensity resistive exercise, the right diet, the right number of calories, 96 00:06:17,380 --> 00:06:20,880 the right types of calories, and the right vitamin D supplementation, if you put all 97 00:06:20,880 --> 00:06:24,650 those things together, we now have astronauts that come home from the Space Station for 98 00:06:24,650 --> 00:06:28,900 the first time not having lost overall bone mass density and that's a huge advance. 99 00:06:28,900 --> 00:06:33,430 >> And that, in fact, is something that you had developed over the course of those 15 100 00:06:33,430 --> 00:06:37,300 years because the protocols you were using at the beginning weren't having those kinds 101 00:06:37,300 --> 00:06:38,300 of results. 102 00:06:38,300 --> 00:06:41,480 >> Julie Robinson: Right, early in the Space Station, our astronauts were losing 1 and 103 00:06:41,480 --> 00:06:45,700 1/2 percent of their bone per month which is about the same as a woman with osteoporosis 104 00:06:45,700 --> 00:06:46,810 would lose in a year. 105 00:06:46,810 --> 00:06:47,810 >> Wow! 106 00:06:47,810 --> 00:06:52,120 >> Julie Robinson: That's really severe and that was a big improvement off of how astronauts 107 00:06:52,120 --> 00:06:57,440 were doing on Mir so there has been a huge development of our understanding of bone processes, 108 00:06:57,440 --> 00:07:02,770 why astronauts are losing bone, and how the bone remodels and recycles itself; understanding 109 00:07:02,770 --> 00:07:06,810 that process helps us protect astronauts so that when they land on Mars, they are going 110 00:07:06,810 --> 00:07:09,410 to be ready to do a space walk right away and they're not going to fall and break their 111 00:07:09,410 --> 00:07:10,540 hop. 112 00:07:10,540 --> 00:07:15,060 But it also has the benefit of giving new insights into understanding those same processes 113 00:07:15,060 --> 00:07:17,960 on earth where so many people are worried about bone loss. 114 00:07:17,960 --> 00:07:24,010 >> In the case of the astronauts, it's the lack of force on the bones that causes them 115 00:07:24,010 --> 00:07:25,010 to weaken? 116 00:07:25,010 --> 00:07:28,240 >> Julie Robinson: It is but it's not the force you think about; it's the lack of forces 117 00:07:28,240 --> 00:07:33,840 at an almost cellular scale where a single cell of a muscle fiber is attached to the 118 00:07:33,840 --> 00:07:38,800 bone matrix and those little forces from the muscles working and carrying yourself around 119 00:07:38,800 --> 00:07:43,680 the world are part of the system of bone that we have that helps our bone recycle. 120 00:07:43,680 --> 00:07:47,770 If your bone doesn't recycle all the time, it becomes brittle and it breaks so you have 121 00:07:47,770 --> 00:07:51,990 to break down your bone and rebuild it all the time; the bone is a living organ. 122 00:07:51,990 --> 00:07:55,990 >> And of course you need astronauts with strong bones to be able to do work. 123 00:07:55,990 --> 00:08:01,790 >> Julie Robinson: Exactly and track risks for human exploration and one of those risks 124 00:08:01,790 --> 00:08:06,320 is if you lost too much bone on your want to Mars, you get to Mars and are running around 125 00:08:06,320 --> 00:08:11,020 in a multiple-hundred pound space suit on very rough terrain, trip and fall and break 126 00:08:11,020 --> 00:08:15,840 something, it may not be possible to get back to the vehicle for example. 127 00:08:15,840 --> 00:08:20,419 So these are real risks to astronauts, but they are also...they connect to real risks 128 00:08:20,419 --> 00:08:21,900 to people here on earth. 129 00:08:21,900 --> 00:08:26,520 You know when my grandmother fell and broke her hip, that was an incredible challenge 130 00:08:26,520 --> 00:08:30,490 for all of her health and so for the same reason we don't want astronauts to break their 131 00:08:30,490 --> 00:08:34,669 hips on Mars, we really want to take that knowledge and find ways to feed it back to 132 00:08:34,669 --> 00:08:38,250 the really active osteoporosis research community here on earth. 133 00:08:38,250 --> 00:08:42,350 >> And it's a relationship...it's not just the exercise; its exercise and the diet? 134 00:08:42,350 --> 00:08:47,680 >> Julie Robinson: Right and it's really interesting because vitamin D is one aspect of that diet 135 00:08:47,680 --> 00:08:49,040 that's turned out to be important. 136 00:08:49,040 --> 00:08:53,880 And NASA had done a study in the Antarctic; you know a simulated environment, but it gets 137 00:08:53,880 --> 00:08:55,010 very dark in the Antarctic. 138 00:08:55,010 --> 00:08:56,010 >> Right. 139 00:08:56,010 --> 00:08:58,440 >> Julie Robinson: On the Space Station and spacecraft, astronauts don't have the sun 140 00:08:58,440 --> 00:09:03,960 every day and from the results of that Antarctic study, they determined vitamin D was much 141 00:09:03,960 --> 00:09:04,960 more important. 142 00:09:04,960 --> 00:09:11,550 That was actually fed into the USRDA reestablishment of a new level for vitamin D and I talk to 143 00:09:11,550 --> 00:09:15,330 people all the time -- I'm one of them -- where my doctor said, "Ok, we now want you to take 144 00:09:15,330 --> 00:09:17,350 more vitamin D than you used to take." 145 00:09:17,350 --> 00:09:22,149 And it was that overall study of which the study with the astronaut simulation study 146 00:09:22,149 --> 00:09:25,230 fed into that that leads to that change in the USRDA. 147 00:09:25,230 --> 00:09:30,300 >> Well in fact the next result that you recognized on your list is something that's related to 148 00:09:30,300 --> 00:09:31,300 the 1st one. 149 00:09:31,300 --> 00:09:32,300 >> Julie Robinson: Mm-hmm. 150 00:09:32,300 --> 00:09:37,690 >> So number 9; understanding mechanisms of osteoporosis and new drug treatments. 151 00:09:37,690 --> 00:09:41,730 I understand that the breakthrough here actually came in a study using mice? 152 00:09:41,730 --> 00:09:43,240 >> Julie Robinson: That's right. 153 00:09:43,240 --> 00:09:48,670 So you know mice are a model system that we use for studying bone; people study bone loss 154 00:09:48,670 --> 00:09:51,780 using mice in laboratories all around the country. 155 00:09:51,780 --> 00:09:57,710 And there was a great partnership between Amgen and BioServe Space Technologies and 156 00:09:57,710 --> 00:10:03,790 it started during Shuttle assembly flights and Amgen flew and used the mice that we flew 157 00:10:03,790 --> 00:10:10,100 on these assembly flights to test some drugs that they had in the process of clinical trials. 158 00:10:10,100 --> 00:10:15,160 So they had developed candidate drug treatments, but they had not yet been approved for FDA 159 00:10:15,160 --> 00:10:19,490 use or they were just starting them in those stage 1 clinical trials and they really wanted 160 00:10:19,490 --> 00:10:23,350 to understand the mechanism of how the drug might be working. 161 00:10:23,350 --> 00:10:29,350 The first of these was related to osteoprotegrin which was...as it sounds like maybe a protein 162 00:10:29,350 --> 00:10:30,350 related to the bone. 163 00:10:30,350 --> 00:10:31,350 >> Mm-hmm. 164 00:10:31,350 --> 00:10:34,830 >> Julie Robinson: And so the idea was to better understand how that remodeling process 165 00:10:34,830 --> 00:10:39,340 works and whether osteoprotegrin inhibition could be used to slow it down. 166 00:10:39,340 --> 00:10:43,900 And that's a whole new line of...a whole pathway of a pharmaceutical treatment for bone loss; 167 00:10:43,900 --> 00:10:48,241 that's a new one and that's what Amgen tested in one of their mice flights to the Space 168 00:10:48,241 --> 00:10:49,241 Station. 169 00:10:49,241 --> 00:10:52,910 >> And I understand they were doing that in order to back-up some research along that 170 00:10:52,910 --> 00:10:55,130 same line that was already underway on the ground? 171 00:10:55,130 --> 00:10:56,519 >> Julie Robinson: Right, exactly. 172 00:10:56,519 --> 00:11:00,709 So it's not that they went to the Space Station and just invented the drug; what they did 173 00:11:00,709 --> 00:11:05,560 is they used the fact that space flight has such dramatic effects on bone loss. 174 00:11:05,560 --> 00:11:10,440 To really amp-up the effects on mice and to be able to take a lot measurements that they 175 00:11:10,440 --> 00:11:12,010 couldn't get any other way. 176 00:11:12,010 --> 00:11:13,899 >> And that's led to a drug that's on the market? 177 00:11:13,899 --> 00:11:14,899 >> Julie Robinson: That's right. 178 00:11:14,899 --> 00:11:15,899 That's right. 179 00:11:15,899 --> 00:11:18,450 The drug is called Denosumab [assumed spelling]. 180 00:11:18,450 --> 00:11:19,640 It's under a trade name; Prolia. 181 00:11:19,640 --> 00:11:20,640 >> Prolia. 182 00:11:20,640 --> 00:11:24,110 >> Julie Robinson: And that trade name or that drug is now on the market. 183 00:11:24,110 --> 00:11:26,180 It has some warnings; all drugs have side effects. 184 00:11:26,180 --> 00:11:27,180 >> Sure. 185 00:11:27,180 --> 00:11:31,220 >> Julie Robinson: But doctors are finding that for some patients who can't take Alendronate 186 00:11:31,220 --> 00:11:36,180 which is the primary drug that most patients take today for osteoporosis, some patients 187 00:11:36,180 --> 00:11:38,210 can't tolerate that; they get stomach upset and things. 188 00:11:38,210 --> 00:11:41,280 And this provides an alternative for some of those patients. 189 00:11:41,280 --> 00:11:47,000 >> Is this a good example of the interest that's being shown by private companies into 190 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:49,680 getting involved in research on board the station? 191 00:11:49,680 --> 00:11:53,720 >> Julie Robinson: Yeah when you think about it, this is really a novel kind of a public/private 192 00:11:53,720 --> 00:12:00,140 partnership for advancing human health and even our economy here on earth to have commercial 193 00:12:00,140 --> 00:12:05,480 companies to have the opportunity to go to this discovery zone where you can make extraordinary 194 00:12:05,480 --> 00:12:09,100 advancements, really study something you can't do anywhere else, take that knowledge back 195 00:12:09,100 --> 00:12:14,170 down to earth, and use it to keep a competitive edge to develop a new solution to a problem, 196 00:12:14,170 --> 00:12:16,290 and then to be able to market that. 197 00:12:16,290 --> 00:12:22,290 That's part of why the Space Station was designated a National Laboratory back in 2005 and then 198 00:12:22,290 --> 00:12:28,010 in 2011, a nonprofit organization called the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space 199 00:12:28,010 --> 00:12:31,240 was selected by NASA in a cooperative agreement. 200 00:12:31,240 --> 00:12:35,440 That cooperative agreement let's CASIS, which is what we call them for short, go out and 201 00:12:35,440 --> 00:12:39,630 work with other pharmaceutical companies that might be interested in trying something in 202 00:12:39,630 --> 00:12:42,959 space, but of course working with NASA is not been something that pharm has been doing 203 00:12:42,959 --> 00:12:47,890 over the years so it's very new and its really exciting to be working with CASIS as they 204 00:12:47,890 --> 00:12:51,710 start bringing in some of these customers and they find ways to take advantage of the 205 00:12:51,710 --> 00:12:53,100 platform that we have. 206 00:12:53,100 --> 00:12:57,470 >> Since you brought it up, what does it mean for the International Space Station or at 207 00:12:57,470 --> 00:13:00,660 least the U.S. part of it to be designated a National Laboratory? 208 00:13:00,660 --> 00:13:04,140 >> Julie Robinson: Well you know there are other National Laboratories around the country 209 00:13:04,140 --> 00:13:12,480 -- Argonne, Brookhaven, Savannah River, Livermore -- and usually you have sort of one government 210 00:13:12,480 --> 00:13:14,920 agency that needs 90 percent of the laboratory. 211 00:13:14,920 --> 00:13:19,529 But they often will offer other government agencies, the private sector, the opportunity 212 00:13:19,529 --> 00:13:23,149 to come in and use those unique facilities because a National Laboratory means it's a 213 00:13:23,149 --> 00:13:28,630 faculty that the nation needs to advance its research and its opened up to all; not just 214 00:13:28,630 --> 00:13:30,530 the one agency that's operating the lab. 215 00:13:30,530 --> 00:13:34,740 And that's exactly what the Space Station means as a National Laboratory means as well. 216 00:13:34,740 --> 00:13:39,540 The really great thing about it is so many other government agencies and entities in 217 00:13:39,540 --> 00:13:43,730 the private sector can take advantage of it because there are so many different kinds 218 00:13:43,730 --> 00:13:45,570 of research that we can do there. 219 00:13:45,570 --> 00:13:51,640 >> The next thing on your list has to do with something that has been taken advantage of 220 00:13:51,640 --> 00:13:52,880 in this way. 221 00:13:52,880 --> 00:13:56,170 The next result on the list, a different kind of thing though than what we've been talking 222 00:13:56,170 --> 00:14:01,829 about, number 8; hyperspectral imaging for water quality in coastal bays. 223 00:14:01,829 --> 00:14:05,930 Now I'll admit at first blush, this was counterintuitive to me. 224 00:14:05,930 --> 00:14:09,790 I think you could learn more about the water being right there and sampling the water. 225 00:14:09,790 --> 00:14:11,350 >> Julie Robinson: Other than going up into space [laughs]? 226 00:14:11,350 --> 00:14:12,350 >> Other than going up into space. 227 00:14:12,350 --> 00:14:13,350 >> Julie Robinson: [Laughs] 228 00:14:13,350 --> 00:14:16,069 >> What is it that you can learn from an instrument on orbit? 229 00:14:16,069 --> 00:14:20,180 >> Julie Robinson: Yeah so the thing about the Space Station is it's about half the altitude 230 00:14:20,180 --> 00:14:25,450 of most remote sensing satellites and it has extraordinary power and data. 231 00:14:25,450 --> 00:14:28,880 And so there are a number of locations that we built here when the Space Station was designed, 232 00:14:28,880 --> 00:14:33,190 over 30 of them, where instruments can be attached to observe the earth or to observe 233 00:14:33,190 --> 00:14:34,190 space. 234 00:14:34,190 --> 00:14:37,521 And one of those instruments is called the hyperspectral imager for the coastal ocean. 235 00:14:37,521 --> 00:14:44,830 It's the first hyperspectral imager ever flown in space that is tuned to looking at the colors 236 00:14:44,830 --> 00:14:49,530 in the ocean; the different wave lengths of light that are going to reflect the best and 237 00:14:49,530 --> 00:14:50,530 give you the most information. 238 00:14:50,530 --> 00:14:54,350 And so it was really designed to help you distinguish...if you're looking down at the 239 00:14:54,350 --> 00:14:59,480 ocean to distinguish between sediment and algae and all of those other things; the bottom 240 00:14:59,480 --> 00:15:03,631 signature and all of those things to really tease apart the signal that you get when you 241 00:15:03,631 --> 00:15:05,200 look at the water. 242 00:15:05,200 --> 00:15:07,570 And it was built by the Naval Research Laboratory. 243 00:15:07,570 --> 00:15:11,971 It was used for a number of years; primarily for the Naval Research Laboratory but they 244 00:15:11,971 --> 00:15:16,390 offered a little bit of access to other scientists. 245 00:15:16,390 --> 00:15:22,380 And this year in January, we converted that to a fully operational part of the Space Station 246 00:15:22,380 --> 00:15:26,980 infrastructure, so we made it part of the National Laboratory so that not just the Navy 247 00:15:26,980 --> 00:15:30,810 but all of our NASA scientists could access it and request imagery. 248 00:15:30,810 --> 00:15:36,889 And one of the great uses that came from its early phase was the Navy had worked with the 249 00:15:36,889 --> 00:15:41,500 EPA and the EPA would coordinate the data collections from the Space Station with times 250 00:15:41,500 --> 00:15:44,600 when they were going to been in the water in bays around Florida. 251 00:15:44,600 --> 00:15:48,850 And those waters are incredibly complicated because you know there are subtropical waters, 252 00:15:48,850 --> 00:15:55,100 they've got a lot of algae, a lot of plankton, there's a lot of sediment running off into 253 00:15:55,100 --> 00:15:59,089 the bays from the land, there's a lot of fertilizer running off into the bays from the land. 254 00:15:59,089 --> 00:16:03,230 So they were interested in seeing if they could tune a hyperspectral algorithm to actually 255 00:16:03,230 --> 00:16:07,620 tell them what the water quality was and the reason you want to do that is because you 256 00:16:07,620 --> 00:16:09,940 can't always be everywhere in the water. 257 00:16:09,940 --> 00:16:13,530 Those sampling...when you send out boats full of scientists to sample the water, that's 258 00:16:13,530 --> 00:16:15,310 an extraordinary field effort. 259 00:16:15,310 --> 00:16:19,220 And so if you could develop the right algorithm, then your hyperspectral instrument can actually 260 00:16:19,220 --> 00:16:22,690 look down and you could predict what the water quality is without being there. 261 00:16:22,690 --> 00:16:30,870 And now the EPA, that won an award for innovative science at the EPA and now they're working 262 00:16:30,870 --> 00:16:35,710 on developing an app so that they can then have kind of real time information about the 263 00:16:35,710 --> 00:16:39,329 water quality in some of the bays around the Florida coast. 264 00:16:39,329 --> 00:16:43,529 >> It's also a good example of research being done on the Station that doesn't really require 265 00:16:43,529 --> 00:16:45,440 the participation of the human crew. 266 00:16:45,440 --> 00:16:46,820 >> Julie Robinson: That's right. 267 00:16:46,820 --> 00:16:51,470 You know crew time is really important because having the human there interacting with the 268 00:16:51,470 --> 00:16:55,490 experiments, talking to the investigators on the ground; all of that is very important 269 00:16:55,490 --> 00:16:59,610 for parts of the science, but these instrument opportunities are also extraordinary. 270 00:16:59,610 --> 00:17:07,200 >> Let's move on to the next in our countdown; number 7 is colloid self-assembly; using electrical 271 00:17:07,200 --> 00:17:10,010 fields for nanomaterials. 272 00:17:10,010 --> 00:17:13,059 There are 2 terms here already that I need definitions for. 273 00:17:13,059 --> 00:17:14,059 >> Julie Robinson: [Laughs] 274 00:17:14,059 --> 00:17:15,169 >> What are colloids; what are nanomaterials? 275 00:17:15,169 --> 00:17:16,169 >> Julie Robinson: Yeah. 276 00:17:16,169 --> 00:17:21,490 So colloids are any mixture of a solid and a liquid that stay in suspension together. 277 00:17:21,490 --> 00:17:24,250 And that sounds real goofy, but think of paint. 278 00:17:24,250 --> 00:17:28,820 You know paint is all your pigment particles and they're mixed into a water and oil base 279 00:17:28,820 --> 00:17:31,160 and they stay together and you could use them. 280 00:17:31,160 --> 00:17:38,059 Another great example of a colloid are some shampoos or fabric softener are colloids where 281 00:17:38,059 --> 00:17:41,880 you've got the softening particles distributed in the liquid matrix that you can then measure 282 00:17:41,880 --> 00:17:42,880 out and pour. 283 00:17:42,880 --> 00:17:45,970 >> And these could be things that are for any number of different applications? 284 00:17:45,970 --> 00:17:46,970 >> Julie Robinson: Right, right. 285 00:17:46,970 --> 00:17:47,970 >> I mean it is all still colloids? 286 00:17:47,970 --> 00:17:48,970 >> Julie Robinson: Right. 287 00:17:48,970 --> 00:17:52,830 And so when you work with colloids in earth whenever you have differences in densities, 288 00:17:52,830 --> 00:17:55,970 things will settle out and eventually sediment. 289 00:17:55,970 --> 00:18:01,080 And so one of the interests that you have is in having paint not settle out before its 290 00:18:05,370 --> 00:18:02,080 time. 291 00:18:05,370 --> 00:18:10,250 You know if a medicine settles and the consumer doesn't shake it up, then they might draw 292 00:18:10,250 --> 00:18:11,320 the wrong dose out. 293 00:18:11,320 --> 00:18:12,320 >> Mm-hmm. 294 00:18:12,320 --> 00:18:14,900 >> Julie Robinson: So keeping colloids in suspension and really understanding those 295 00:18:14,900 --> 00:18:21,820 is a really important part of an area of materials or physical science research and what nanomaterials 296 00:18:21,820 --> 00:18:26,380 are is another area of material science that interfaces with the colloids work. 297 00:18:26,380 --> 00:18:30,790 So nanomaterials are those materials that you assemble together where you can actually 298 00:18:30,790 --> 00:18:35,780 get the structure you want, but you're paying attention to that structure molecule by molecule. 299 00:18:35,780 --> 00:18:41,130 And since we don't have molecule sized you know tools for putting those together, you 300 00:18:41,130 --> 00:18:45,510 have to find ways to get those materials to assemble themselves in the way that you want 301 00:18:47,530 --> 00:18:46,510 them. 302 00:18:47,530 --> 00:18:48,530 >> Julie Robinson: Right. 303 00:18:48,530 --> 00:18:49,530 >> ...on orbit? 304 00:18:49,530 --> 00:18:50,530 >> Julie Robinson: Right. 305 00:18:50,530 --> 00:18:52,710 But on earth or in space, you have to be clever about how you manipulate them. 306 00:18:52,710 --> 00:18:56,880 You can use electronic fields, you can use...you know try to use all the tricks you have to 307 00:18:56,880 --> 00:19:00,910 get the molecules to line up the way you want, to lattice in and form a structure the way 308 00:19:00,910 --> 00:19:01,910 you want. 309 00:19:01,910 --> 00:19:05,340 If you can control your smart materials, you can make amazing things. 310 00:19:05,340 --> 00:19:09,980 And so a lot of people now don't know what nanomaterials are, but they've heard of them 311 00:19:09,980 --> 00:19:14,820 because they're providing all kinds of innovations in industry; better filters, better...you 312 00:19:14,820 --> 00:19:19,169 know all kinds of different things you can use if you can get those molecules to be arranged 313 00:19:19,169 --> 00:19:20,780 the way that you want them. 314 00:19:20,780 --> 00:19:24,890 >> In this particular case you've got something of a breakthrough because of the human participation. 315 00:19:24,890 --> 00:19:28,580 You had a little serendipity with one of the crew members, right? 316 00:19:28,580 --> 00:19:29,580 >> Julie Robinson: Right. 317 00:19:29,580 --> 00:19:37,110 So we had a study going on early on ISS that was starting to look at magnetorheological 318 00:19:37,110 --> 00:19:38,110 fluids. 319 00:19:38,110 --> 00:19:41,410 Those are fluids that get thicker or thinner when you put them in a magnetic field. 320 00:19:41,410 --> 00:19:47,809 And those are important fuilds for shock absorbers, bridges, they can be put in a building and 321 00:19:47,809 --> 00:19:51,210 they can be firmer and then if there's an earthquake, they can relax and let the building 322 00:19:51,210 --> 00:19:53,690 flex a little bit and then firm up again when the earthquake is over. 323 00:19:53,690 --> 00:19:55,750 They are really amazing materials. 324 00:19:55,750 --> 00:19:56,750 >> Yeah. 325 00:19:56,750 --> 00:20:00,580 >> Julie Robinson: And we had a scientist, Dr. Eric Furst, who was doing a study with 326 00:20:00,580 --> 00:20:06,160 a very simple system at first and in those first experiments, Peggy Whitson on orbit 327 00:20:06,160 --> 00:20:09,450 was setting up the settings for what the electromagnetic field would be. 328 00:20:09,450 --> 00:20:13,210 She was basically setting the current and he had these different mixtures of particles 329 00:20:13,210 --> 00:20:19,050 in liquid and she accidently got a setting a little off and all of a sudden the field 330 00:20:19,050 --> 00:20:23,980 started pulsing so that the particles instead of just ling up in nice little chains which 331 00:20:23,980 --> 00:20:28,320 is what they had been doing, they started ling up, breaking apart, ling up, breaking 332 00:20:28,320 --> 00:20:29,320 apart. 333 00:20:29,320 --> 00:20:33,710 And so that was exciting; the investigator on the ground didn't know what it was. 334 00:20:33,710 --> 00:20:34,710 It wasn't expected. 335 00:20:34,710 --> 00:20:37,520 We wound up doing a lot more runs than where ever expected. 336 00:20:37,520 --> 00:20:41,000 Now he's I think on to his third separately funded project. 337 00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:46,320 You know that was a decade ago and now he's working with these incredibly sophisticated 338 00:20:46,320 --> 00:20:51,500 colloid mixes where he's designing the particles that are floating in this liquid and using 339 00:20:51,500 --> 00:20:56,240 special mixes and then seeing if he can apply the fields to make them self-assemble in the 340 00:20:56,240 --> 00:20:57,240 way that he wants. 341 00:20:57,240 --> 00:21:01,020 And he's had some really important publications that have come from that work in the Proceedings 342 00:21:01,020 --> 00:21:04,150 of the National Academy of Sciences and so that was one of the ones that I definitely 343 00:21:04,150 --> 00:21:05,480 wanted to call out for this top 10. 344 00:21:05,480 --> 00:21:06,520 >> That's very interesting. 345 00:21:06,520 --> 00:21:09,770 And next on our list is another result that's in the physical sciences. 346 00:21:09,770 --> 00:21:15,470 This is number 6; a new process of cool flame combustion. 347 00:21:15,470 --> 00:21:19,120 And I believe this one is like a brand new discovery. 348 00:21:19,120 --> 00:21:21,120 Start by explaining what is a cool flame? 349 00:21:21,120 --> 00:21:25,169 >> Julie Robinson: Yeah, I had to find that out myself because I don't think of flames 350 00:21:25,169 --> 00:21:26,169 as ever being cool. 351 00:21:26,169 --> 00:21:27,169 >> No. 352 00:21:27,169 --> 00:21:29,761 >> Julie Robinson: And in fact a cool flame is you know roughly a 600 degree Celsius flame 353 00:21:29,761 --> 00:21:31,580 so it's still pretty hot. 354 00:21:31,580 --> 00:21:36,440 But what...you know we have this great combustion facility on the Space Station. 355 00:21:36,440 --> 00:21:40,580 Many people don't realize; they think of fires in space as being bad and of course an uncontrolled 356 00:21:40,580 --> 00:21:42,080 fire in space is very bad. 357 00:21:42,080 --> 00:21:47,290 But we have a facility where almost all the time we're burning different materials and 358 00:21:47,290 --> 00:21:51,000 the reason we do that is because just like I mentioned there was no sedimentation, well 359 00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:53,179 there's also no convection in orbit. 360 00:21:53,179 --> 00:21:57,840 So when you...if you were to burn a candle on the Space Station, instead of getting a 361 00:21:57,840 --> 00:22:02,780 nice little candle shaped flame, instead you're going to get this glowing blue ball with no 362 00:22:02,780 --> 00:22:05,400 warm air rising off the top of it. 363 00:22:05,400 --> 00:22:10,740 And what that means from a scientific perspective is you can model combustion in much simpler 364 00:22:10,740 --> 00:22:15,860 set of mathematics on the Space Station because you don't have all this mixing that can feed 365 00:22:15,860 --> 00:22:17,590 the flame, disrupt the flame. 366 00:22:17,590 --> 00:22:20,049 So if you think about...another way to think about it is when you know you teach a boy 367 00:22:20,049 --> 00:22:23,420 scout to build a fire, you teach them to make sure you've got the right openings for air 368 00:22:23,420 --> 00:22:24,420 to flow through the fire. 369 00:22:24,420 --> 00:22:25,420 >> Right. 370 00:22:25,420 --> 00:22:28,020 >> Julie Robinson: Because that's...but that's a very complex process. 371 00:22:28,020 --> 00:22:31,720 The math behind that is incredibly difficult to model. 372 00:22:31,720 --> 00:22:37,240 So what combustion scientists do on the Space Station is they try to simplify the system 373 00:22:37,240 --> 00:22:43,310 by taking all that convection mixing out of the system and then study combustion in its 374 00:22:43,310 --> 00:22:48,110 purest form and that has some great advantages mathematically but mathematical advantages 375 00:22:48,110 --> 00:22:52,900 also turn into the knowledge that can help you innovate and develop more efficient combustion 376 00:22:52,900 --> 00:22:53,900 engines. 377 00:22:53,900 --> 00:22:58,679 >> Well you're trying to find out why things burn, but also what causes the burning to 378 00:22:58,679 --> 00:22:59,679 stop, right? 379 00:22:59,679 --> 00:23:04,200 >> Julie Robinson: Right and you're even trying to understand you know exactly how that burning 380 00:23:04,200 --> 00:23:07,630 functions as a system and describe that mathematically. 381 00:23:07,630 --> 00:23:09,530 So the cold flame... 382 00:23:09,530 --> 00:23:10,530 >> Right. 383 00:23:10,530 --> 00:23:13,220 >> Julie Robinson: ...discovery was another big surprise that came. 384 00:23:13,220 --> 00:23:20,240 And what happened is we have a droplet combustion apparatus and we were basically taking little 385 00:23:20,240 --> 00:23:25,179 bits of things like heptane, you know liquid fuels, and in heating them up and in burning 386 00:23:25,179 --> 00:23:30,450 up this little droplet and watching it and collecting data on the temperature, the gasses 387 00:23:30,450 --> 00:23:35,400 that were coming off, how long it took, and we were controlling different flow rates and 388 00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:40,720 what was discovered was there was a set of conditions where after the normal blue ball 389 00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:44,960 occurred, then that blue ball kind of suffocates in its own gasses. 390 00:23:44,960 --> 00:23:45,960 >> The flame goes out? 391 00:23:45,960 --> 00:23:46,960 >> Julie Robinson: The flame goes out. 392 00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:52,910 And then afterwards there was this glow that reignited, but it wasn't the same blue flame 393 00:23:52,910 --> 00:23:55,330 that you had seen before; the same hot flame. 394 00:23:55,330 --> 00:24:02,299 Instead it this cool reddish flame and it turns out that there is a secondary combustion 395 00:24:02,299 --> 00:24:06,289 process that was not predicted by any of the existing combustion theories. 396 00:24:06,289 --> 00:24:09,460 So it's this brand new novel process and the scientists called it cool flame because it's 397 00:24:09,460 --> 00:24:12,090 much cooler than the primary flame was in the beginning. 398 00:24:12,090 --> 00:24:14,370 >> Is it...spontaneous combustion is almost what it's like. 399 00:24:14,370 --> 00:24:16,620 >> Julie Robinson: Well it actually hadn't quite finished. 400 00:24:16,620 --> 00:24:17,620 >> Ok. 401 00:24:17,620 --> 00:24:21,600 >> Julie Robinson: People thought it had quenched and stopped, but there was a little bit of 402 00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:26,169 time and then there was another chemical process that could come in and in an additional set 403 00:24:26,169 --> 00:24:27,350 of combustion. 404 00:24:27,350 --> 00:24:31,810 >> Additional research than I'm sure is being done based on these findings? 405 00:24:31,810 --> 00:24:32,850 >> Julie Robinson: That's right. 406 00:24:32,850 --> 00:24:33,850 That's right. 407 00:24:33,850 --> 00:24:39,320 So you know basically this facility is operating whenever we can in the background going through 408 00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:45,630 different gasses, different flow rates, different combustion settings, collecting all this priceless 409 00:24:45,630 --> 00:24:49,850 data that's never been known before, and then all of that data feeds into models that will 410 00:24:49,850 --> 00:24:55,350 help us both to better design combustion engines in general, but then to also better understand 411 00:24:55,350 --> 00:25:00,150 how things burn in orbit and that helps us provide fire safety for future spacecraft 412 00:25:00,150 --> 00:25:01,150 as well. 413 00:25:01,150 --> 00:25:06,200 >> And in fact there are several...I think several different kind of combustion experiments 414 00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,130 that are going on beyond just the one that lead to this? 415 00:25:09,130 --> 00:25:10,130 >> Julie Robinson: That's right. 416 00:25:10,130 --> 00:25:15,520 We have an experiment called BASS -- Burning and Suppression of Solids -- where we're burning 417 00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:20,340 all the different materials that could catch fire in a spacecraft and seeing what happens 418 00:25:20,340 --> 00:25:21,590 when they actually burn in space. 419 00:25:21,590 --> 00:25:26,419 And what we're finding is all the standards we had used for space call flammability were 420 00:25:26,419 --> 00:25:30,660 assuming that they burn the same on earth as they do in space and they don't. 421 00:25:30,660 --> 00:25:33,930 So there are certain things that are more flammable in space than we thought they would 422 00:25:33,930 --> 00:25:35,890 be and other things that are less flammable. 423 00:25:35,890 --> 00:25:36,890 >> Mm-hmm. 424 00:25:36,890 --> 00:25:39,030 >> Julie Robinson: And in the end, I think the work that we're doing on the Space Station 425 00:25:39,030 --> 00:25:43,619 is going to completely rewrite the fire safety manuals for space craft. 426 00:25:43,619 --> 00:25:48,580 >> You're finding out why things burn but also I guess some insight into how to stop 427 00:25:48,580 --> 00:25:49,860 fires that you don't want? 428 00:25:49,860 --> 00:25:53,750 >> Julie Robinson: Right, and even insights into how to detect fires because smoke detectors 429 00:25:53,750 --> 00:25:58,070 are assuming that smoke looks like something, its detectable at certain sizes. 430 00:25:58,070 --> 00:26:03,850 And it turns out particles are a lot bigger in space than anybody thought. 431 00:26:03,850 --> 00:26:09,030 >> Julie, this is great and I want to thank you for helping me make sense of all of that. 432 00:26:09,030 --> 00:26:14,230 The things that you wouldn't think about before and those things are just half of our top 433 00:26:14,230 --> 00:26:15,230 10 list. 434 00:26:15,230 --> 00:26:18,490 In our next program, we're going to discuss numbers 5 through 1. 435 00:26:18,490 --> 00:26:24,450 That means we're going to learn about advances into how genes turn on bacteria, advances 436 00:26:24,450 --> 00:26:29,429 in neurosurgery, in the study of dark matter, we're going to look at how the station is 437 00:26:29,429 --> 00:26:34,890 reaching students of all ages all over the world, as well as potential advances in the 438 00:26:34,890 --> 00:26:36,640 treatment of cancer. 439 00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:41,810 All of those are among the top 10 research results from the International Space Station. 440 00:26:41,810 --> 00:26:42,850 [ Music ] 441 00:26:42,850 --> 00:26:54,320 >> Read Dr. Robinson's Blog, A Lab Aloft, online at blogs.NASA.gov. 442 00:26:54,320 --> 00:27:00,990 Follow us on twitter at ISS_Research and on Facebook at Facebook.com/ISS. 443 00:27:00,990 --> 00:27:11,159 See the International Space Station as it orbits above your location; logon to SpotTheSAtation.NASA.gov. 444 00:27:11,159 --> 00:27:17,770 And you can follow the mission; watch Space Station Live weekdays on NASA Television and