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Hello. I'm Fran Chiaramonte, Program Scientist
for Physical Sciences aboard the International Space Station.
And today I'm going to talk to you
about the Light Microscopy Module.
First of all, I'd like to mention the fact
that we've received two awards from the ISS research program.
One for the CBB experiment,
which is a heat pipe-related research.
And the second for plant research
in which they use biomarkers to find
out what genes are expressed when you go into microgravity.
And we are very proud of that work
that our researchers have done.
In 2014, Proctor and Gamble received an award
from the ISS program as well.
And their work was looking at colloidal systems and the effect
of colloids on commercial product stabilizers.
Now, for those of you that are interested
in conducting research using the LMM,
in addition to many different areas,
we are soliciting proposals in biofilms
in which the LMM will be the key device in which to examine
and do the research for this areas.
Biofilms are very important
to NASA-this is something that is undesired.
We are looking for materials that are resistant
to biofilms aboard the International Space Station.
We can put it to use right away.
And ultimately for crude missions to Mars
where the astronauts have to remain a long period of time
in a very small, enclosed capsule,
and the bacteria can grow, and this all must be contained.
And we feel that this is an important area
to help not only people on Earth but also NASA
in its long duration missions.
So, currently in the program we have two new modules being built
that will use the LMM.
And this is a temperature gradient module
and an electric field module.
Both of these allow us to begin the process of being able
to manipulate the particles
that our colloidal scientist will be studying.
As opposed to a randomly ordered system,
we can now control the orientation of the particles
and begin to look at changing the material properties
of these soft matter physics.
So, to ramp up where we are and what we've done,
the LMM was launched in 2009.
Since then, we have successfully completely 12 experiments.
And we plan to run 15 to 20 more.
So, as far as I can see,
the program looks very strong, very robust.
And the way I like to look at it, we're holding all aces.
Thank you for your time.
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