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well freezers are the lifeline if you

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will for much of the human research that

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takes place on the station crew members

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collect blood and urine samples but they

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must have a way to return those to earth

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at the proper temperatures that's where

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something fittingly called polar comes

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in polar units are being tested here at

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the marshall center like many other

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payloads before marshall has the

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facilities to simulate launch conditions

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and make sure that these payloads are

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ready for launch as well as operating on

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the station i caught up with some of the

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engineers to learn more about polar

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i'm here in what's called the shaker

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room with josh dunn and he is the

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systems engineer at the university of

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alabama birmingham and josh

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what are we doing here in the shaker

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room you're testing something called

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polar what is polar well polar is a

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freezer that was designed and built by

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the university of alabama at birmingham

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and it's the latest addition to the

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available cold stowage resources on the

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space station

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and it's a it's a small freezer uh it's

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designed to fit within the single locker

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dimension requirements for express rack

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payloads and to give some perspective on

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that i would say it's approximately half

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the size of a your typical mini fridge

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or dorm room type refrigerator

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operationally it's got a temperature

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range that ranges anywhere from as warm

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as four degrees celsius slightly above

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freezing

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all the way to negative 95 degrees

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celsius so how does that compare to my

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refrigerator and freezer at home well i

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think the typical refrigerator at home

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is somewhere around 4 degrees on the

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upper end and then in the freezer it's

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in the negative 20 range so it's quite a

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bit different so this facility is really

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vital to human research tell us about

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what it what it transports so polar's

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main purpose is transporting science to

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and from the space station

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and there's uh

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really a wide variety of science that

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could be stowed within it it provides a

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generically designed sample volume

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so pretty much anything that requires

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transportation in a thermally controlled

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environment can be stowed within it

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typically

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biological samples such as blood and

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urine specimens are what it's stowed but

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uh it's certainly not limited to those

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types of samples

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so you're involved because you're an

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engineer at uab and you guys

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built this tell us about the

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relationship between

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you guys and nasa so the uab and nasa

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relationship goes back several years our

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the engineering division of our center

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began uh supporting

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development of protein crystal growth

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hardware for experiments on the space

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shuttle and over the years we've kind of

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evolved and

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our main focus has shifted into the

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development of cold stowage payloads

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such as polar and glacier and we also

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have another payload called merlin which

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is a freezer refrigerator incubator i

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think we have four merlins on board the

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station that are supporting everything

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from

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science to

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stowage of the crews food and drinks in

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the galley so

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we support payload integration and

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operations out of ksc and then our

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contracts are managed out of jsc so

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between the testing we do here at

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marshall and the other activities at the

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other centers we have a close working

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relationship with with multiple nasa

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centers

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and now we're going to talk to one of

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your colleagues about the actual testing

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okay

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i'm joined now by aaron reese he is a

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mechanical engineer at uab and

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you're kind of handling the testing here

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of polar tell us what the testing is we

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say we're in the shaker room what does

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that mean yes ma'am we're doing a

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vibration testing on polar as part of

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the flight qualification process

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each unit is uh

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tested and analyzed to ensure that it

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meets the flight requirements so it's

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actual flight hardware brought here and

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then you shake it we are able to from

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shaking the unit we

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impart a

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flight-like vibration spectrum onto the

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unit and from that we can determine the

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resonant response of the unit and also

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quantify the workmanship of the

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production of the unit so we can verify

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that it was built properly

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now we're not talking actual vibrations

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like you feel at launch are we yes we

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are it's uh exposed to a flight like

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vibration spectrum but not quite there

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right not quite at that level for we

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have uh a qualification unit that's

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exposed to uh

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over a qualification level vibration

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load and then these are exposed to an

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acceptance level which is slightly lower

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than that

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to determine the workmanship of the unit

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so how long does this testing go on

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uh each unit is tested this will take

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the vibration testing typically takes a

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day and then we'll move on to different

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environmental testing but we have to do

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it for 14 units so it spans the entire

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production of the project so it's not

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just the shaker test what else do we do

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we do uh we'll be doing acoustic testing

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but we also come back up here for to

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marshall for

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different things such as electromagnetic

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interference testing

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and functional checkouts with a flight

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like express rack

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throughout different stages of the

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production and flight preparation

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process why the acoustic testing there

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there are maximum noise limit

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requirements on the station to prevent

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the crew from experiencing unhealthy

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noise limits so we've

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operate polar at its maximum it's

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loudest state and verify that we are

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not exceeding those limits so what's it

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like for you working with this actual

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flight hardware and really helping with

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the research program it's it's pretty

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awesome i mean it's great to know that

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one one thing that we've worked on is

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going to be

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orbiting the earth on the space station

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it's going to be used to

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progress science and uh

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it's it's incredibly we're incredibly

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fortunate to have this opportunity

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you stand there in birmingham and you

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watch it fly over and say hey