Space Station Primed for New Era of Scientific Discoveries
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA and its international partners are
looking forward to unprecedented scientific opportunities aboard the
International Space Station, or ISS. With station assembly nearing
completion, the ISS Partnership is looking forward to using the
station to its fullest capacity. The U.S. administration's fiscal
year 2011 budget proposal calls for continuing station operations to
at least 2020, which will create new opportunities for advancing
microgravity science research.
"This is a really exciting week for the space station and for the
scientists that want to use these laboratories," said Julie Robinson,
program scientist for the station at NASA's Johnson Space Center in
Houston. "We've already had some important findings on station during
its construction. With this strong support for continued space
station lifetime to 2020 or beyond, we will have amazing discoveries
from the science and technology research that can be accomplished."
NASA senior managers from the space station program and counterparts
at Russia's Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, Canadian Space
Agency and Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science
and Technology met to discuss the implications of continuing station
operations and utilization and recently issued a joint statement
about the station's future.
They noted, "ISS continuation could bring great benefit to all
partners and humankind by demonstrating significant and sustained
return on the partnership's investment in the ISS program, primarily
through the enhanced research and usage opportunities."
The entire statement is available at:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/
The ISS Partnership is scheduled to meet again at the Heads of Agency
level on March 11 in Tokyo to further discuss partner efforts to
undertake their own decisions for space station extension and the
opportunity it will provide to use this unique platform for
scientific, technological, diplomatic and educational purposes.
The continued use of the station will open the window for more studies
that can only be done in the unique environment of space.
Specifically, scientists can discover how cells reproduce and
differentiate in microgravity with applications to areas such as
tissue generation and wound repair. Also, there are opportunities for
more human physiology research to learn about systems such as heart,
muscle and bone, which can benefit space explorers and ill or injured
patients.
Studies of fluid physics that benefit from lack of buoyancy in
microgravity will provide new understanding of soft matter,
supercritical fluids and two phase flow. Technology tests will
advance areas such as robotics, life support and spacecraft
servicing.
Station construction began in Dec. 1998 and will be completed during
2010. Once complete, the station will transition to a new "full
usage" phase, where continuous scientific research will be conducted
aboard the multinational orbiting laboratory.
During the past decade, scientific research accomplishments made
aboard the station included advances in the fight against food
poisoning and new methods for delivering medicine to cancer cells.
Studies of salmonella bacteria identified the controlling gene
responsible for its increased virulence in microgravity, and a
commercial company has used changes in virulence of microbes to
screen for candidate vaccines.
Results of an early station experiment led to improvements in a method
for delivering drugs to targets in the human body. The research led
the way for better methods of micro-encapsulation, a process of
forming miniature, liquid-filled balloons the size of blood cells
that can deliver treatment directly to cancer cells.
NASA has a new Web feature that provides examples of space station
research dividends including cancer treatment, food poisoning vaccine
development, air purification, remote ultrasound tests and many more.
For more information about station science payoffs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_
To take a virtual tour of the station and information about station
missions, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/station
To find out how to see the station from your own backyard, visit:
http://www.spaceflight.nasa.
For more information about the upcoming shuttle mission, designated
STS-130, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle
Source: NASA
