One of the sort of wise mantras in our office
is there's nothing more important than the thing you're doing right now.
And I think that's especially true when we're aboard the space station
and have the opportunity to perform some incredible experiments
on behalf of some amazing principal investigators on the ground.
This is the Human Research Facility rack.
What's set up here is a whole bunch of equipment for taking blood
Basically you put the needle in and then the tube here.
And you connect other sample tubes too to draw blood for
whatever research they have going on that needs blood samples.
We're actually executing over
350 experiments during our six months up here on the space station.
And right now it's science season. We have so much going on.
We're always doing experiments on our own bodies.
We're trying to understand
how the human body responds to the spaceflight environment from radiation
being in an apparent microgravity environment.
All of those things but we're also doing a lot of cool
technology demonstrations to try to understand
how to make our time up here and on future missions more efficient.
I just last week was working on this combustion chamber.
It's actually a big chamber
that's where we can start fires with a lot of cameras and sensors
to totally understand how fire forms in zero g.
And that's pretty important for understanding
how fires propagate on the ground as well.
So what we’re doing is modifying the Materials Science Lab.
Which is a very nice furnace that we have here on the space station
that allows us to go from a rapid cooling rate to now a furnace that
goes especially for a very, very slow cooling rate.
And that allows us to do a completely different set of experiments.
We're doing a whole bunch of plant research right now.
So there's actually three active plant experiments going on all simultaneously.
One's looking at cotton genes and basically different strains of cotton
to make it more drought resistant
and it's kind of like stem-cell research, except for cotton.
Another one is looking
at different ways to water a plant, and then another one is looking at
we have what's called a Multi Variable-g Platform.
Our genes change, but also plant genes change.
And we're looking at how that changes in different environments.
All right.
So today, Kayla is harvesting some of the
cotton plant cell cultures.
Just a few weeks ago, you installed this fancy device,
which is right behind me, which is an electron microscope.
And for me as a material scientist, an electron
microscope, it's a giant leap on the space station.
For the first time, we have a microscope that allows us to look
really into the tiny details.
We get to see the sunrise and sunset
16 times a day as we're orbiting every 90 minutes.
And you can see actually see the layers of the atmosphere.
And it reminds us that everything we know, live, love, breathe is in that really,
really a thin layer.
So we really have to take care of it.
It's an incredibly fulfilling experience.
To be a part of such a mission-driven
organization who is accomplishing so much every single day.
And when I look back on the things that we've had the honor and privilege
to be a part of over the last five months,
it gives me goosebumps every time I think about it.
And this crew is just really special.
We just had a phenomenal time enjoying this experience together.