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the crew always looking for new

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experiments and when the next dragon

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cargo ship the spacex vehicle arrives at

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the international space station later

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this month it'll be carrying some 5000

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pounds of supplies and science hardware

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one of the new devices and experiments

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flying up though has a pretty minimal

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weight

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because it consists primarily of

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microbes

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it's called project mercury standing for

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the microbial ecology research combining

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citizen and university researchers and

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then involved the gathering of microbes

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from a lot of locations down here on

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earth sending them to space and having

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the astronauts take some samples on

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board the station and send those back

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down to earth microbiologist dr david

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coyle of the university of california

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davis is a co-investigator on the

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project and i got to talk to him a

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little bit earlier this week started out

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by asking just why they were hoping to

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send microbes to space

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the first reason of course is just

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because it's awesome we get to send

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microbes into space

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but the scientific reason is that we're

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interested in how well

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various microbes collected from built

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environments on earth grow in

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microgravity tell me a little bit about

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the crowdsourcing element of this

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project because you guys got the public

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kind of directly involved in gathering

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some of these samples

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yeah so this project is at its heart as

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much about outreach as it is science so

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there's numerous aspects to this project

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including collecting thousands of

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samples around the country from from

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people that came to these events where

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we collected the microbes that were also

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sending into space that are being

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analyzed for a sort of a map of what

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microbes live where and how that

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compares to what's living on the

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international space station but we

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really from the beginning wanted to

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engage the public in helping collect the

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samples all the data will be available

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on our website people will be able to

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follow the growth of the microbes in

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space on our website and we really

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wanted to sort of connect with the

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public and communicate these basic ideas

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that we're interested in which is that

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microbes are everywhere and most of them

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aren't scary

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and

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kind of following your statement that

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they're everywhere i hear you guys got

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some samples from some pretty

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interesting locations as well

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yeah we collected microbes from all

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sorts of interesting places we we got

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some from the liberty bell

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we collect from a number of sporting

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events you know

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a spurs game in san antonio

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the 50-yard line at candlestick park

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where the san francisco 49ers play att

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park where the the giants play a number

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of uh sue the t-rex the the

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skeleton and the field museum all sorts

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of interesting locations

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where people were were engaged in in

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collecting microbes so to switch gears a

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little bit i'm i'm understanding you're

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also involved with somebody called the

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science cheerleaders who and what

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exactly are they and how they get

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involved in the project

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so the science cheerleaders are a

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nationwide organization of about 250

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current and former nfl and mba

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cheerleaders

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who are pursuing or have postgraduate

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degrees in in math and science fields

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and so

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they already do a whole lot of wonderful

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outreach around the country talking to

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to kids about how science can be cool

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and about how you could have a career as

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a professional cheerleader and have a

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phd in biochemistry for example

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and

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they actually are the ones who

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originally conceived of this project

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because they wanted to use their network

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of outreach context to do some real

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science instead of just talking about

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how cool science is and so they

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approached us to sort of take care of

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the microbiology end of things and they

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kind of get back to the science what

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exactly you know are you guys hoping to

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learn from this what are you going to be

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looking for upon further study of all

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these microbes either on the station or

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back here on earth

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well there's sort of two different

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questions i guess the first is you know

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we'd like to know what's living on the

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international space station

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people have done work previously where

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they've they've grown up and looked for

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various pathogens so it's a

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disease-causing microbes because that's

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something obviously nasa is concerned

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about but there hasn't been a lot of

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work on looking at the ecosystem as a

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whole so the astronauts are going to

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collect samples around the space station

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we're going to extract dna from those

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samples and look at all the microbes

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that are present just sort of a who is

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there and in what abundance kind of of

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survey and we're going to compare those

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results to similar work that we and

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others are doing in various built

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environments here on earth

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sort of related to that is the microbes

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that we're sending to the space station

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that'll be grown up by the astronauts

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and in that case we're asking how do

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these microbes behave in microgravity

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it's been shown from some previous work

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that some microbes grow differently in

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microgravity than they do on earth

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but most of that work again has been

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focused on disease-causing microbes all

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of the ones that we're sending are

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good or neutral microbes from the

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perspective of human health and we're

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interested on how they behave in space

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well it's definitely a fascinating and a

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new take on some existing studies

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like you said a big part is public

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engagement so what's the website people

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can follow along keep up with the

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research on

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so people can check us out on

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spacemicrobes.org or on twitter we use

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the hashtag spacemicrobes

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all right well

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hopefully everybody can check that out

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we'll throw up a lower third with that

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address and again dr david coyle of the

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university of california davis

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co-investigator on the mercury project

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thanks so much for calling in giving us

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an inside look at this exciting

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experiment we'll definitely follow along