Crew-2 members photographed during a training session at the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California. Left to right: Thomas Pesquet from the ESA (European Space Agency), NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough and Akihiko Hoshide from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Credit: SpaceX
NASA‘s SpaceX Crew-2’s mission is set to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon on Earth Day, April 22. The four include NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur and, a first for the Commercial Crew Program, two international partners, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
The Crew-2 astronauts will join the other Expedition 65 members, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos, for a six-month mission to conduct scientific experiments in low-level orbit. the earth. A major scientific focus on this expedition is the continuation of a series of Tissue Chips in Space studies. Tissue chips are small models of human organs with multiple cell types that behave much the same as in the body.
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins will perform operations for the Cardinal Heart tissue chip research in December 2020. Credit: NASA
These chips make it possible to identify safe and effective therapies – drugs or vaccines – much faster than the standard process. In addition, many changes in the human body during space flights resemble the onset and progression of aging and diseases on Earth, but occur much more quickly in microgravity. Scientists use specialized tissue chips in space to model diseases that affect specific organs in the human body, but it can take months or years to develop on Earth.
Tissue chips are an aspect of tissue engineering, using a combination of cells, engineering, and materials to repair, maintain, improve, or replace biological tissues. Fabrics made on Earth require some sort of scaffold to grow on and can only reach a thickness of up to 1 centimeter, or a little over a quarter of an inch. But in microgravity, instead of growing in a flat layer, cells grow to three dimensions that closely resemble tissues in the body.
This image shows the testing of the Roll-out Solar Array, or ROSA, as of June 2017. The first solar panels with the new roll-out design travel to the space station on the Crew-2 launch. Credit: NASA
“We know that cells communicate with each other and that this communication is critical to proper functioning,” said Liz Warren, senior program director at the ISS US National Laboratory. “We don’t fully understand why, but in microgravity, cell-to-cell communication works differently than in a cell culture flask on Earth. Cells also aggregate or collect differently in microgravity. These functions allow cells to behave more like when they are in the body. Microgravity thus appears to offer a unique opportunity for tissue engineering. “
A collaboration between the ISS National Lab and the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) has sent tissue chips to the space station to analyze the effects of microgravity on human health and turn them into improvements on Earth. Studies use tissue chips to study immune system aging, lung immune response, musculoskeletal disorders, kidney function, muscle loss or sarcopenia, and more.
All tissue chip studies will be assigned two flights, Warren explains, and some of these experiments will be launched a second time during Expedition 65. “The first flight is a validation of the system. The second flight is generally intended to test a therapeutic or therapeutics. “
NASA and Boeing employees will lift solar panels into flight support equipment on April 2, 2021 at the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 63-by-20-foot solar panels will be launched to the International Space Station later this year. Credit: NASA / KSC
Another key element of Crew-2’s mission is to update the station’s solar power system by installing the ISS Roll-out Solar Array (iROSA) – compact panels that roll open like a huge yoga mat. The technology development dates back to 2009 and benefited from dozens of NASA Small Business Innovation Research awards and subsequent ground-based demonstrations. In 2017, the base design was tested on the space station to determine strength and durability. Expedition 65 crew will begin preparations this summer to supplement the station’s existing rigid panels with the first pair of six new arrays.
A study flying aboard Crew Dragon with Crew-2, CHIME, is studying possible causes of a suppressed immune response in microgravity. Microgravity can cause changes in the human immune system, a potential concern for long-term space travel. The CHIME study could help identify possible causes of immune system dysfunction and lead to ways to prevent or counteract this, helping space travelers as well as people with compromised immune systems on Earth.
The waters of the Red Sea off the northwest coast of Saudi Arabia are home to some 260 species of coral reefs. This photo was taken by Space Station crew members in November 2020 as part of the Crew Earth Observations (CEO) project. Credit: NASA
Crew members remain incredibly busy between maintenance and upgrades of the station itself inside and out, daily activities to keep themselves healthy, and a full list of scientific research – the station’s primary purpose. Adding more crew on board the microgravity laboratory increases the time available for scientific activities. The November 2020 addition of the Crew-1 team, NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, to the Expedition 64 crew of cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins has spent more than doubled crew hours on scientific research and support activities.
Crew-2’s Earth Day launch seems appropriate, given the space station is a significant contributor to climate research. Expedition 65 astronauts join many others before them in recording our planet through the Crew Earth Observations (CEO) project. In total, crew members took more than 1.5 million photos of the Earth and contributed to scientific research, such as studies of artificial lighting at night, algal blooms and the breakdown of Antarctic ice shelves.
When Crew-2 members return to Earth in the fall, they will have increased that number of images, as well as the total number of hours spent in space science activities. With astronauts already selected for Crew-3 and Crew-4, the orbit lab continues to achieve impressive results.