In the Spotlight:
 Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, the Associate Administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, will be retiring at the end of this year. He leaves the position after six years - the longest tenure in that role in the history of the agency. According to Mike Gold, executive vice president for civil space and external affairs at Redwire, and a former NASA official, “Thomas Zurbuchen was the most entrepreneurial associate administrator in the history of the agency.”
In celebration of his legacy of scientific leadership, we present an interview with him discussing 'Mentorship' with his own mentor, Dr. Len Fisk.
|
|
WIRED Magazine Features Stories on the Challenges of Growing Plants on the Moon
See the story about the hazards of growing plants on the moon. Senior Space Biology investigators Drs. Anna-Lisa Paul and Rob Ferl's experiments using actual lunar regolith samples collected during the Apollo missions are featured, as well as Space Biology Program Scientist, Dr. Sharmila Bhattacharya. She tells a compelling story about why plants in space are necessary and all the challenges that must be overcome to grow them on the lunar surface. Watch the video here.
How Artemis Astronauts Plan to Grow Plants on the Moon
As NASA ramps up the Artemis program, growing plants using water and soil from the moon could become a necessity during longer duration stays there. When space biologists recently grew plants in actual moon soil, it was a game changer. WIRED spoke with Sharmila Bhattacharya to find out exactly how they did it. Watch the video here.
|
|
 Spaceflight News
NASA Rolls Back Artemis I due to Hurricane Ian
 Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 28 as a Category 4 storm. Millions of Floridians are without power and damage throughout the state is extensive.
A dedicated ride-out team remained at the center and sheltered at designated locations. Teams at Kennedy Space Center have begun making initial damage assessments as weather conditions permit.
President Biden has declared that a major disaster exists in Florida and ordered federal aid to supplement state, tribal, and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by Hurricane Ian. NASA will continue to work with our partners at all levels of government.
While the assessment and clean up at Kennedy Space Center is underway, it will take some time before a re-launch of the Artemis I mission can be rescheduled.
|
|
"We Are Artemis" - Meet the Artemis I Scientists
Dr. Zheng Wang of the Office of Naval Research talks about his research studying radiation-resistant fungi and how it will help us to understand the effects of radiation on humans.
Dr. Timothy Hammond of the Veterans Administration, Institute of Medical Research and his wife and partner Dr. Holly Birdsall discuss the multi-purpose applications of microscopic algae and how they could potentially be used to help humans travel deeper into space.
Dr. Federica Brandizzi of Michigan State University discusses the technology being developed to grow nutrient-dense plants for human consumption on deep space missions.
Dr. Luis Zea of the University of Colorado, Boulder discusses why yeast was selected as a human analog to understand the effects of deep space radiation on DNA damage and repair.
|
|
 Listen to Episode 258 of "Houston We Have a Podcast", Dr. Anna-Lisa Paul and Dr. Rob Ferl discuss how their latest discovery of plant growth in lunar soil just may change the future of spaceflight as we know it. This episode was recorded on July 18, 2022.
|
|
 New Discoveries
Bobtail squid provide insight into how space disrupts a host-microbe symbiotic relationship
 Spaceflight is a novel and profoundly stressful environment for life. One aspect of spaceflight, microgravity, has been shown to perturb animal physiology, which poses numerous health risks, including disruption of normal development. Microgravity can also negatively impact the interactions between animals and their microbiomes. However, the effects of microgravity on developmental processes influenced by beneficial microbes is poorly understood. Dr. Jamie Foster studied the binary mutualism between the bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, and the gram-negative bacterium, Vibrio fischeri, under modeled microgravity conditions to understand how this unique stressor alters apoptotic cell death induced by beneficial microbes.
The outcomes of this study indicated that modeled microgravity alters the expression of both extrinsic and intrinsic apoptosis gene expression and that this process is mediated in part by caspases - a family of protease enzymes playing essential roles in programmed cell death. Modeled microgravity-associated increases of caspase activity can be pharmacologically inhibited suggesting that perturbations to the normal apoptosis signaling cascade can be mitigated, which may have broader implications for maintaining animal-microbial homeostasis in spaceflight. The article is available online.
 This study was funded by Space Biology grant, "Effects of Modeled Microgravity on the Induction of Bacteria-Induced Apoptosis During Animal Development" to Dr. Jamie Foster of the University of Florida. Her research is focused how the normal bacteria-induced development of animals is mediated under microgravity conditions, in order to determine the sensitivity of these associations to perturbations in the space environment.
|
|
 If you're on Facebook you can keep up with NASA Space Biology by following us there.
Find us at Facebook.com/spacebiology.
|
|
 Funding Resources for Prospective Researchers
Are you a researcher and wondering where you can find funding opportunities to enable your research to be flown to the orbiting laboratory? There are several sources of funding available to scientists to be used for research and development, payload development, payload processing at NASA facilities, on-orbit operation, and more. Visit this link for a guide to online funding information for space station research.
|
|
Biospecimen Sharing Program
Share | Research | Discover
 Help NASA maximize the scientific return from biological spaceflight investigations and encourage broader participation of the research community in space biology-related research. Non-human biospecimens are dissected, collected, and preserved by the Space Biology Biospecimen Sharing Program (BSP) team at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC). These biospecimens and associated Metadata are made available through NASA’s Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC). They are searchable and available for request on the Life Sciences Data Archive public website. Flight and ground control biospecimens are available from COSMOS, NASA’s space shuttle missions, and International Space Station (ISS) investigations. What will your discoveries unfold?
For more information on BSP, please click here.
Check out NBISC to learn more about NBISC and how to request these biospecimens.
|
|
|
|
Events & Opportunities
