International Space Station Research Results Accomplishments

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NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) celebrated 15 years of operations in November 2013 and is living up to expectations as a leading space laboratory, hosting state-of-the-art science facilities, and providing researchers with a continuous microgravity environment to conduct investigations across many disciplines.

From the first ISS element, launched in November 1998, the ISS has supported investigations and technology demonstrations that will advance NASA’s human exploration capabilities beyond low Earth Orbit (LEO), and improve the daily lives of people on Earth well beyond its operational lifetime. The first 15 years of utilization on ISS has helped answer scientific questions ranging from “How do fluids flow in space?” to “What are the origins of the universe?” The science and technology returns have grown at a steady pace. Even before the assembly of ISS was completed in 2011, the on-orbit crew were busy performing experiments, and with the full complement of a 6 person crew, more than 1 600 investigations have been conducted to date across the international partnership.

This report is intended to provide an archival record of the internationally-sponsored ISS research results collected for investigations performed from 2000-2011 on ISS (Expedition 0 through 30), including scientific publications from studies based on operational data. These investigations represent the research of thousands of scientists around the globe, and have impacts beyond the field of space research into traditional areas of science in multidisciplinary ways that no Earth-based laboratory has done. Yet much like a typical laboratory on Earth, the logistics of the ISS allows for many investigations to be carried forward over several ISS crew expeditions, enabling repeated experimentation and data collection that traditional science calls for. One example of this is the Seedling Growth-1 (SG-1) joint NASA-ESA experiment that was implemented as an extension of the earlier Tropi-1 and Tropi-2 plant growth experiments that first confirmed the existence red-light based phototropism in roots and hypocotyls of seedlings. Researchers were able to capitalize on Tropi results in the SG-1 design by improving different lighting conditions, decreasing seed storage time, and adding real-time seedling observation through improved image downlink [4] .

The results from ISS have so far yielded updated new insights into how to better live and work in space, such as addressing radiation effects on crew health [4] , combating bone and muscle loss [1, 7] , improving designs of systems that handle fluids in microgravity [12] , and how to most efficiently maintain environmental control [15] . Latest examples of the ISS utilization applications relevant to our life on Earth is published in the second edition of the ISS Benefits for Humanity, which documents several tangible benefits that have resulted from ISS utilization in areas of Earth Observation and Disaster Response, Human Health, Global Education, Innovative Technology, and Economic Development of Space [2] . These benefits include such examples of how space-based research leads to improvements in therapies for balance disorders [2, 16] and contributions to improvements in smart fluids for advanced braking systems and earthquake dampening devices [2, 6] . ISS results also show promise in diverse applications such as medicine [2, 10] and global maritime tracking [11] and have advanced our knowledge of our planet’s health while also contributing to disaster response efforts [2, 13, 9, 8] . With all its diversity, the ISS continues to inspire millions of students in ways that only space can [14, 5, 3] .

The ISS offers a unique platform for science with critical capabilities not available anywhere else. It provides long-duration microgravity exposure, thermosphere exposure, and external environment exposure for material observations at high inclination, altitude, and velocity. The microgravity environment of the ISS allows scientists to observe unique behaviors that are otherwise masked by gravity on Earth, such as thermocapillary and fluid flows, protein crystal growth, flame structures, and the structure of living cells. The ISS platform also provides access to extreme heat and cold cycles, ultra vacuum, atomic oxygen, and high-energy radiation.