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we are awaiting a

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cargo launch that will be taking place

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on saturday as mentioned spacex 4 is

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scheduled to launch to the space station

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later this week saturday to be exact

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carrying with it important research

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benefiting life on earth as well as

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future exploration missions laurie meigs

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joins us now live from the kennedy space

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center in florida where many of the

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scientists and investigators have

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arrived to see their payloads off and

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loy i think you have a couple of them

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with you now right

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that's right things are getting really

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exciting here at kennedy space center as

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we near launch day today we're going to

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talk about an experiment that features

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college students and fruit flies joining

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me now is sharmila bhattacharya she is

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the principal investigator for the ames

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student fruit fly experiment and amy

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gresser the deputy project scientist

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thank you both for joining us today

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first of all sharmila tell us why we

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study fruit flies

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yeah good question so fruit flies are

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actually a very very interesting and

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useful

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uh little critter to to use for science

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uh people have been studying fruit flies

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and using them uh to understand

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important questions for over a hundred

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years

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and so genetically we know a lot about

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them they're very well characterized

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they also because they're so small

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in a small area when you do a

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spaceflight experiment you can get a lot

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you can fly a lot of these

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little fruit flies and so when you get

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the data back you have a lot of

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information

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a lot of samples to do your studies

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another thing that i think surprises a

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lot of people but but is important to

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know

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is that fruit flies actually are very

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when you look at their dna and you

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compare it with dna say of humans

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there's a lot of similarity so when you

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look at the database which has

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the collection of genes which are

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important for human functions so when

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you get any kind of an anomaly then you

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have

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you can show a human disease when you

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look at that collection and you compare

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it against the fruit fly dna you

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actually find more than 70 percent

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similarity so more than 70 of those

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genes are similar so so there's a lot

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that you can use the fly uh to do

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studies with and then a lot you can

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understand about other more complex

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systems like the human being and how an

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astronaut would experience space flight

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so what happens to them when they get to

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orbit yeah so when they get to orbit

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they're in this unique environment with

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no gravity

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and uh so amy will tell you in a second

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we send up the flies and then they

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actually

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will lay the eggs and you get another

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generation of flies coming out you'll

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get hundreds of flies coming out

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somewhere around day 12

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10 to 12 and then those adults can live

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for about six weeks

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wow so amy we've seen video of you

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working in the lab you've been here

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i guess a little over a week now getting

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these these flies ready for flight what

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have you been doing tell us about your

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work so we test extensively back in our

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lab at nasa ames in california but

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obviously there's always the chance that

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something can go wrong during transport

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so we've been out here for about a week

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doing rechecking all of our space flight

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equipment and

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monitoring the development of the flies

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and luckily everything looks good so

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we're to the point now where we're

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preparing for our final set of

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preparations before we get ready for

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launch

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how many do you send and how is that

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decided

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based on a lot of testing is how it's

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decided and initially we'll send up 15

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flies of each type in separate chambers

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within our fly habitat but within about

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two weeks we expect to have over 100

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flies of each type as sharmila said so

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they multiply very quickly in space

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which is one of the advantages of using

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flies

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all right well sharmila as the student

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mentor we talked about this is a student

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experiment tell us about

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i guess the rewards for you and and what

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what it means to you when this really

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comes to fruition

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yes so in a way lori it's uh just like

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you have kids and you you teach them and

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and you watch them grow

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and then when they achieve something you

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know you have this sense of pride

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it's very similar with students and

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you know we have a lot of students come

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through the lab and

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the 12 that have worked to building this

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making this payload happen you know

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built designed tested this payload

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they've done an amazing job they work

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very independently and for me it's that

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same sort of sense of pride when i see

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this payload come together get ready to

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fly and all the hard work they put in um

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and one student in particular chaithan

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who's here uh is helping amy uh put this

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you know he built the box uh towards the

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end he finalized it um

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yes we see him there and uh

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yeah it's it's a great feeling to see

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your students succeed and and come

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together and work so nicely together as

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a team as well is this the first time

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we've studied something like this yes

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indeed it is

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in that it's the first time we actually

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have this kind of a high definition

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video of fruit flies in space where we

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can look at their behavior we'll

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also be doing some studies when the

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samples come back down on the ground

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post flight

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those some some of those types of

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analysis have been done before but this

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high definition video uh of the fruit

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flies and the setup that the students

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have put together is definitely the

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first time uh that we've done this all

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right well we look forward to it an

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exciting

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piece of research there thank you both

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for joining us today and that will do it

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for us from the kennedy space center in

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florida we'll have more reports