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One of the sort of wise
mantras in our office

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is there's nothing more important
than the thing you're doing right now.

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And I think that's especially true
when we're aboard the space station

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and have the opportunity to perform
some incredible experiments

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on behalf of some amazing
principal investigators on the ground.

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This is the Human
Research Facility rack.

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What's set up here is a whole bunch
of equipment for taking blood

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Basically you put the needle in
and then the tube here.

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And you connect other sample tubes too
to draw blood for

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whatever research they have going
on that needs blood samples.

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We're actually executing over

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350 experiments during our six months up
here on the space station.

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And right now it's science season.
We have so much going on.

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We're always doing experiments
on our own bodies.

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We're trying to understand

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how the human body responds to
the spaceflight environment from radiation

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being in an apparent microgravity
environment.

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All of those things
but we're also doing a lot of cool

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technology demonstrations
to try to understand

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how to make our time up here
and on future missions more efficient.

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I just last week was working on this combustion
chamber.

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It's actually a big chamber

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that's where we can start fires
with a lot of cameras and sensors

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to totally understand
how fire forms in zero g.

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And that's pretty important
for understanding

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how fires propagate on the ground as well.

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So what we’re doing is modifying
the Materials Science Lab.

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Which is a very nice furnace
that we have here on the space station

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that allows us to go from a rapid
cooling rate to now a furnace that

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goes especially for a very, very
slow cooling rate.

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And that allows us to do a
completely different set of experiments.

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We're doing a whole bunch
of plant research right now.

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So there's actually three active plant
experiments going on all simultaneously.

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One's looking at cotton genes
and basically different strains of cotton

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to make it more drought resistant

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and it's kind of like stem-cell research,
except for cotton.

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Another one is looking

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at different ways to water a plant,
and then another one is looking at

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we have what's called a Multi Variable-g Platform.

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Our genes change,
but also plant genes change.

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And we're looking at how that changes
in different environments.

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All right.

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So today, Kayla is harvesting some of the

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cotton plant cell cultures.

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Just a few weeks ago,
you installed this fancy device,

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which is right behind me,
which is an electron microscope.

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And for me as a material scientist,
an electron

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microscope,
it's a giant leap on the space station.

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For the first time, we have a microscope
that allows us to look

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really into the tiny details.

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We get to see the sunrise and sunset

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16 times a day
as we're orbiting every 90 minutes.

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And you can see actually
see the layers of the atmosphere.

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And it reminds us that everything we know,
live, love, breathe is in that really,

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really a thin layer.

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So we really have to take care of it.

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It's an incredibly fulfilling experience.

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To be a part of such a mission-driven

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organization who is accomplishing
so much every single day.

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And when I look back on the things
that we've had the honor and privilege

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to be a part of over the last five months,

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it gives me goosebumps
every time I think about it.

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And this crew is just really special.