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>> Houston Station
on "Space to Ground".

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>> Josh Byerly: Welcome
to "Space to Ground".

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I'm Josh Byerly.

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The Space Station crew has been
busy this week unloading a lot

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of the cargo that was delivered
aboard Orbital Sciences' Cygnus.

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The vehicle, carrying more
than a ton of supplies,

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arrived this past weekend
and will be unloaded

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over the next couple of weeks.

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The crew will then start
packing Cygnus full

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of stuff they no longer need.

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The vehicle will depart the
Station on February 18th

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and head toward a destructive
re-entry in Earth's atmosphere.

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One of the experiments that
was on the Orbital flight looks

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at how bacteria grow in space.

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We've learned that bacteria
grow like crazy in microgravity,

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to the point that it's difficult
to combat them with antibiotics.

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The Antibiotic Effectiveness in
Space #1 experiment,

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or AES-1, looks at why these
microorganisms are so resistant.

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What is it about being up
there that allows them to grow

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so well, and how can
we figure out how

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to fight this growth both
in space and here on Earth.

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Another piece of science flown

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on Cygnus called SPHERES-Slosh actually looks

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at rocket fuel.

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As you can imagine,
when rockets launch,

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the fuel inside tends
to slosh around.

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The experiment will use the
bowling ball-sized satellites

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on board to figure out
exactly how the sphere moves.

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>> So this experiment is
giving us all of the test data

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that we're hoping to use
to simulate what happens

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to the propellant
tanks on our vehicles.

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>> Josh Byerly: This
can not only lead

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to better rocket design but
also to better fuel efficiency

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in our cars and trucks
here on the ground.

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@GeeksNGamers asked
us, "What's the upload

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and download speed
in space right now?

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Guessing fiber isn't an option?"

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Well, considering the space
station is 260 miles high

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and traveling pretty
fast, that would have

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to be one long fiber cable.

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So we use NASA's communication
satellites, which are more

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than 20,000 miles up in the sky.

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There are actually several
different ways we rely data,

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but the highest rate is
in the KU band system

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with downlink speeds up to
300 megabytes per second.

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Make sure you send
us your questions