New Chief Scientist at NASA

NASA Welcomes New Chief Scientist

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has named planetary geologist Ellen Stofan the agency's chief scientist, effective Aug. 25.

Stofan will be Bolden's principal advisor on the agency's science programs and science-related strategic planning and investments.

Prior to her appointment, Stofan was vice president of Proxemy Research in Laytonsville, Md., and honorary professor in the department of Earth sciences at University College London in England.

The appointment marks Stofan's return to NASA. From 1991 through 2000, she held a number of senior scientist positions at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., including chief scientist for NASA's New Millennium Program, deputy project scientist for the Magellan Mission to Venus, and experiment scientist for SIR-C, an instrument that provided radar images of Earth on two shuttle flights in 1994.

"Ellen brings an extraordinary range of scientific research knowledge and planetary exploration experience to the chief scientist position," Bolden said. "Her breadth of experience and familiarity with the agency will allow her to hit the ground running. We're fortunate to have her on our team."

Stofan conducts research on the geology of Venus, Mars, Saturn's moon Titan, and Earth. Stofan is an associate member of the Cassini Mission to Saturn Radar Team and a co-investigator on the Mars Express Mission's MARSIS sounder. She also was principal investigator on the Titan Mare Explorer, a proposed mission to send a floating lander to a sea on Titan.

Stofan holds master and doctorate degrees in geological sciences from Brown University in Providence, R.I., and a bachelor's degree from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

She has received many awards and honors, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Stofan has authored and published numerous professional papers, books and book chapters, and has chaired committees including the National Research Council Inner Planets Panel for the recent Planetary Science Decadal Survey and the Venus Exploration Analysis Group.

From Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters

Fighting Cancer with Microgravity Research

A few weeks ago I posted Science Time on the ISS Part 1, where I talked about how research on the International Space Station (ISS) is helping in the fight against cancer.  A few days after that post, NASA released an article Fighting Cancer with Microgravity Research which outlines what NASA is doing on the ISS to help with cancer research.

Why is cancer research in space different from research on the ground? 
The  human body is made up of cells, which normally grow within support structures made up of proteins and carbohydrates which allows the cells that form organs in the human body to maintain their three-dimensional (3-D) shapes.  In labs on Earth, scientists can only grow cells on flat surfaces, they cannot create the 3-D shapes that form human organs.  The cells do not behave the way they would if they were in the same 3-D shapes if they were in the human body.  This makes it very hard to study cancer.

Well in space, there is no gravity, so support structures of proteins and carbohydrates are not needed.  Vitro cells, cells not inside a living organism, arrange themselves into 3-D groupings called aggregates.  These closely resemble what happens in the human body and allow scientists to study a more accurate model.

Dr. Jean Becker, PhD, a cell biologist at Nano3D Bioscienes in Houston and the principal investigator CBOSS-1-Ovarian study (the study on the ISS), "So many things change in 3-D, it's mind-blowing -- when you look at the function of the cell, how they present their proteins, how they activate genes, how they interact with other cells.  The variable that you are most looking at here is gravity, and you can't really take away gravity on Earth. You have to go where gravity is reduced."

There have been early studies with 3-D cell formation in space on Space Shuttle missions STS-90 and STS-107.  More information can be found at the linked article above.

So when people ask what the ISS is doing for them, please remind them, its one of our best bets to understand cancer.

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.