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Space is one of the most severe environments
into which humankind has ever ventured.
It has helped us discover the very limits
of human physiology far from the earth's surface.
And it has helped us find medical
and technological solutions to some
of humanity's most perplexing physiological problems.
Biological processes are extremely complex.
The difficulty in understanding them is only compounded
when they occur inside the human body.
The physiological challenges faced by astronauts
in the microgravity environment aboard the ISS-loss
of bone density, and muscle mass, balance disorders,
sleep disturbances, cardiovascular changes,
and a weakened immune system can be problematic
for aging people here on Earth as well.
Understanding these processes in astronauts
on board the ISS generates insight
into how these problems can be better managed on earth.
We look at the immune system in space to find
out what regulates turning on the immune system on earth.
The elderly have a very big problem in resisting infection.
So we're looking for new ways
to boost the human immune system here on earth.
And in spaceflight it's much like mathematics
where you remove a variable.
And when you remove a variable
from an equation you many times can get a result.
And the biologic system is much the same way.
We are removing gravity as a variable.
And we're able to look at the immune system
in an entirely new way.
In fact today we got news that we had been accepted for a paper
where we were showing how the immune system is working
and a new mechanism that has never been discovered before,
and only was possible because of the National Laboratory
on the International Space Station.
And with the results we hope to help the elderly here
on earth to resist infection.
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The ISS serves as a test bed for medical researchers
and bioengineers, by removing the element of gravity
from their investigations.
This allows underlying physiological processes
to be revealed and better understood.
One of the microscopes onboard the ISS,
the Light Microscopy Module or LMM, has contributed to research
in plant growth and new advanced materials.
It also has improved consumer products using techniques
that simply can't be done on earth.
The LMM provides investigators a unique vantage point
from which they can study both the biological processes
of the healthy human body and the drugs
and medical technologies which can mitigate human health
when something goes wrong.
Using a modified commercial Leica RXA laboratory microscope,
the NASA Glenn Research Center has configured the LMM to allow
for real-time interaction and manipulation of experiments
in space using ground-based controls.
Interaction with the experiments is easy for staff, researchers,
and the inflight ISS crew.
The LMM is located inside the Fluids Integrated Rack
of the US Destiny Laboratory Module aboard the International
Space Station.
The FIR rack provides the LMM
with common laboratory infrastructure,
including an optics bench, temperature control, power,
illumination, imaging, data processing,
an ultralow micro-G acceleration environment.
The Light Microscopy Module uses the existing electronics
of the Leica microscope supplemented with unique
and innovative internal and external electronics
to support remote operation,
enhanced automation, and superior imaging.
Motors and linear actuators motorized the microscope's
manual functions.
Engineers at NASA Glenn Research Center and Leica equip the LMM
with 23 micrometers which permit remote control by scientist
on the ground and reduce ISS crew time requirements in space.
This tends to increase the available time for research.
To enable concurrent confocal imaging and wide-field imaging,
two identical high resolution monochrome cameras are provided.
One is mounted to the confocal head itself
and the other is mounted on the backboard
of the camera headpiece.
Additionally, a small surveillance camera is mounted
inside the auxiliary fluids container
where sample cells are processed and contained.
The LMM can image regular and specialty microscope slides,
including petri dishes and opticells,
which allow oxygen transport through a membrane and provide
for containment of biological samples and sample mediums.
The LMM not only help scientists better understand biological
processes, it can also be used to help understand
and develop innovative ways to treat disease
or to maintain good health.
Dr. Alessandro Grattoni
of the Methodist Hospital Research Institute
in Houston is using the LMM together with a team
of scientists from Methodist, the University of Colorado
at Boulder, and NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
They're developing an implantable device
that releases medicine at a steady rate.
This could help people with chronic ailments,
live healthier, more comfortable lives.
The research team hopes their drug release system will free
patient suffering from diabetes, for example from having
to measure their blood sugars several times a day in order
to optimally adjust their medication.
A similar device may also deliver chemotherapy drugs more
precisely to a tumor, thereby avoiding toxic side effects
to other parts of the body.
It could also deliver pain medication
in a constant stream helping
to avoid overmedicating or spikes in pain.
Grattoni and co-PI Mauro Ferrari are working on a device
that releases medication through a nano-channel membrane
and into the body at a sustained steady rate.
Grattoni says he and others need to improve their understanding
of the underlying particle and fluid physics in order
to design better nano-channels for a given drug.
Having a clear understanding of how these particles
and molecules diffuse throughout the system and engineer system,
that will give a tremendous advantage with respect
of knowledge that we have currently.
And that would allow us to develop new system,
and improved system for again, biomedical application on Earth.
Currently the microscope offers simple backlighting
and epi-fluorescent illumination.
In 2016 the FIR and LMM upgrades have a confocal scanner
and the frequency-doubled neodymium YAG laser,
and a faster digital camera will allow image slices of a sample
to be assembled in 3-D, and analyzed in more detail.
Neodymium YAG lasers typically admit light in a wavelength
of 1064 nanometers in the infrared spectrum.
Inside the LMM that beam is put
through a frequency-doubling crystal
to yield 532 nanometers green laser light,
hence the term frequency-doubled neodymium YAG.
The LMM aids space biologists, physicists, chemists, engineers,
and graduate student researchers
in achieving a better understanding of colloids,
biological samples, and other materials
on the microscopic level.
If you're planning a project that would benefit
from in-flight observations
of the Light Microscopy Module you can use the CASIS Program
or NASA research announcement to get on the flight manifest.
Hello. I'm Ron Sicker, the Light Microscopy Module
payload manger.
2015 has been another great year for microscope-based research
on the International Space Station.
We have contributed to award-winning research
in fluids, plant biology, and thermophysics.
The 3-D confocal end camera upgrades to LMM are scheduled
to become operational in late 2016.
Before these upgrades are implemented, several new areas
of research will be initiated.
A medical device experiment known
as microchannel diffusion experiment, or MDE,
was sponsored by the Center for the Advancement
of Science in Space, or CASIS.
This experiment was initially launched on SpaceX 7
and then rebuilt by Bio Serve
and will be conducted on SpaceX 8.
Two biophysics experiments were selected
from the NASA Space Life
and Physical Sciences Divisions 2013 NASA research announcement.
These experiments will be initiated with LMM biophysics 1
and 2 with principal investigators Larry DeLucas
and Eddie Snell.
Along with ongoing college research
with the ACE-H2 experiment,
these tests will bring the total number of LMM experiments to 16.
Next year a new NASA research announcement
for material science experiments will be announced
from the Space Life and Physical Sciences Division
at NASA Headquarters.
Since 2010 LMM science has grown from thermal physics
and biology technical demonstrations,
to also include plant biology, invertebrate biology,
medical devices, colloids, material science,
and the expansion into medical and human health.
The growth of interest in microscope-driven experiments
on ISS is expected to evolve further with new sample modules
in confocal imaging capabilities in LMM.
This work, combined
with possible commercial off-the-shelf systems presently
in development by our integration
and international partners, will take our microscope systems
through the completion of the ISS mission.
The coordination of this work will be the focus
of next year's Microscopes on ISS 2016 workshop.
The LMM work is funded by the Space Life
and Physical Sciences Division at NASA headquarters
and the ISS Program Office at Johnson Space Flight Center
through codes 0Z and 0B.
To provide full use of LMM, we will continue to collaborate
with our ISS partners and CASIS.
The LMM hardware is developed by a highly skilled team
at Zin Technologies in Cleveland, Ohio.
Thank you for attending the 2015 Microscopes on ISS Workshop.
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