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experiment work taking up the vast

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majority of the work for the astronauts

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on board the station and several new

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experiments studying bacteria were

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actually launched in return earlier this

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spring on spacex 3.

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why don't we now go find out a little

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bit more about a couple of these from

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lori meigs out at the payload operations

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integration center at the marshall space

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flight center in huntsville alabama lori

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i understand results of these

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experiments could actually help us on

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future flights to mars

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past studies have shown that bacteria

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becomes more virulent in space that's

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why we need further research to

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understand why as we travel to farther

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places out like mars the experiments

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we're talking about today are called

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brick 18. i spoke with david reed the

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lead payload engineer at the kennedy

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space center to find out more about

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these investigations and how the brick

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canisters work

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brick 18 consists of two

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investigations one investigation

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is looking at

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the effects of flying bacteria in in

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microgravity specifically looking at

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their

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antibiotics there's a lot of concern

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right now in the in the space flight

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community uh there's been other research

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done that shows that some organisms

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become more virulent

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more able to cause disease when

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they go into space and

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part of that equation is understanding

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how they might become more resistant to

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antibiotics as well which could be a

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real problem on a long-term space flight

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in some place like mars

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so this investigator has got two kind of

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common bacteria and he's applying

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antibiotics to two different antibiotics

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to them to see they each have different

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slightly different genetics in them to

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see how they respond to that treatment

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the second investigator is using a small

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plant called arabidopsis it's in the

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mustard family it's a it's a very small

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plant it only grows about this big

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typically before we

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halt these kind of investigations

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and

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it's a so-called model organism because

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a lot of work has been done on the plan

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its whole genome is sequenced but in any

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event

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this particular investigator is looking

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to

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understand the effects of space flight

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stress on how that plant

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expresses its genes so

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when

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like a heat stress or a water stress it

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it expresses certain genes that makes

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certain proteins in its body and then

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we can

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arrest its development which in plant

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terms means we

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we fix them and bring them back home

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and then afterwards we can do

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biochemical analysis to understand how

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those genes were turned on and off

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so six of these guys fit inside of a

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much larger canister that looks like

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this and

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this is called the brick pdfu canister

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and you can see there's six positions

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that are each identify with numbers one

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through six

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and that's because

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the crew member may be asked to

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chemically preserve individual positions

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at different points in time

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he does that by taking a another device

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that looks and acts a whole lot like a

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fancy caulking gun and so the way the

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fancy caulking gun called an actuator

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tool works is you pull back the

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the pommel on it again just like a

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caulking gun and then

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this

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mates with the top surface of the

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canister

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in the process of crew member depressing

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the actuator then you can see that this

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this piston travels down

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in doing so there's a little bit of

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engineering magic that goes on inside

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here there's a there's a steel rod that

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gets driven down through some septas

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that steel rod is what actually pushes

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that piston then inside that i already

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explained is within the individual pdfu

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and that forces the liquid on there when

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the crew member takes this off

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at all points in time

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this device maintains three levels of

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containment so containment and

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keeping the crew safe is of course

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paramount importance when we fly in

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space

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the sort of thing that you could do

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easily on the ground by simply pouring

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something from a beaker on top of a

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of biology is a little more challenging

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in space so there there is some

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sophistication even though it's

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something that we call a brick and it

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even looks like a brick you could almost

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build yourself a fort out of these if

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you wanted to

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now these experiments and several others

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that came back on space x3 are now at