Science Time on the ISS Part 1

To answer the age old question of what do you do in space once you get up there?  SCIENCE!!!

I will try my best to keep you up to date with what science is going on at the ISS.  I am not personally involved with the science going, I am a little busy keeping the crew alive, but I hear all the call-downs to Huntsville (Where Marshal Space Flight Center is located, the payloads operations center for NASA) about science. 

Here is a cool study going on the ISS.  It involves saliva from the University of North Dakota's own NASA astronaut  Dr. Karen Nyberg and  European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano.  It is called the Microbiome investigation. Microbiome investigates the impact of space travel on the human immune system and on an individual's microbiome (the collection of microbes that live in and on the human body) to help predict how long-term space travel may impact human health. It is known that factors such as stress, diet and an impaired immune system can trigger changes in the human microbiota, increasing the risk of contracting a disease. The product of this study will be an assessment of the likelihood and consequences of alterations in the microbiome due to extreme environments, and the related human health risk. Findings could be used to benefit people on Earth that live and work in extreme environments. Other potential applications of this study could be to further research in preliminary detection of diseases, alterations in metabolic function and immune system deficiency.

This is really interesting because of something else I have seen.  At CHOP, Children's Hospital of  Philadelphia there are some researchers using modified HIV vaires to change the human immune system to attack cancer cells.  One of the issues thet talk about is that they do not understand how the humman immune system will respond to that level of stress.  And here on the ISS now, they are studying the effects of extreme stress on the human immune system.  Here is the video #firewithfire

 So when someone asks you what science NASA does on the ISS to help people on Earth, just remind them that one of the keys to finding a cure for cancer might come from current studies going on 250 some miles above the Earth.