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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Open Science for Plants in Space: Data Sharing, Standards, and Informatics for Reuse and Knowledge Discovery

Upcoming deep space missions will rely on plants for crew and ecosystem health. Open access space biology data enables scientists to examine the biological responses of plants to ionizing radiation, altered gravity, low atmospheric pressure, elevated CO2, altered photoperiods and many other abiotic stressors. Open Science is the practice of making research available to all, while respecting diverse cultures, and fostering collaborations with equity. 2023 is the ‘Year of Open Science’, and NASA has a 5-year Transform to Open Science (TOPS) initiative designed to rapidly transform the agency toward an inclusive culture of open science. NASA’s Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) within NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division provides access to data from space-relevant biological experiments. OSDR combines two databases, GeneLab and Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA) to maximize access to standardized ‘omics (e.g., transcriptomics, proteomics) and phenotypic data (e.g., microscopy, biomass), respectively. GeneLab started in 2014 with the creation of the first space-relevant FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) biological ‘omics repository, providing detailed metadata on investigation, sample, and assay levels. The addition of ALSDA to OSDR expands plant data analysis capabilities across both phenotypic and ‘omics data. Today, OSDR hosts 62+ plant datasets and has enabled 58 peer-reviewed publications. Most of these publications were collaboration efforts under the OSDR Analysis Working Groups (AWGs). AWGs provide great opportunities for investigators to collaborate and set new standards for space-relevant data and metadata. The AWGs welcome any ASPB members interested in contributing plant expertise for space biology, and to serve as subject matter experts as we establish the framework for modern plant data archiving. Investigators are invited to submit their space-relevant plant datasets to OSDR and visit the site to learn about the tools OSDR has to offer (osdr.nasa.gov/bio).

FAIR↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Science Discovery Engine: Connecting Heterogeneous Scientific Data and Information

Transformative science often occurs at the boundaries of different disciplines. Making interdisciplinary science data, software and documentation discoverable and accessible is essential to enabling transformative science. However, connecting this diverse and heterogeneous information is often a challenge due to several factors including the dispersed and sometimes isolated nature of data and the semantic differences between topical areas. NASA’s Science Discovery Engine (SDE) has developed several approaches to tackling these challenges. The SDE is a unified, insightful search experience that enables discovery of NASA’s open science data across five topical areas: astrophysics, biological and physical sciences, Earth science, heliophysics and planetary science. In this presentation, we will discuss our efforts to develop a systematic scientific curation workflow to integrate diverse content into a single search environment. We will also share lessons learned from our work to create a metadata crosswalk across the five disciplines.

Kaylin Bugbee↗
NASA NTRS2021

SMD Technology Highlights

Six technology highlights from the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Heliophysics, Astrophysics, Earth, and Biological and Physical Sciences divisions. Technologies featured include 1. the 1653 m2 Solar Cruiser Solar Sail Propulsion system to enable missions to reach novel and otherwise difficult or impossible destinations for observing the Sun. 2. Technology sponsored by NASA and developed by MIT Space Nanotechnology Lab is developing high-performance space instrumentation for more powerful future X-ray telescopes that will study the dynamics of the high-energy universe. 3. Active thermal control technology that will help enable large ultra-stable telescopes needed to detect and characterize Earth-like planets around other stars. 4. SMD sponsored high-performance infrared sensors with reduced requirements for cooling onboard satellites and these sensors could potentially be flown on small satellite platforms like CubeSats. 5. A new technology that will utilize electron beams/ultraviolet light to remove dust that could help protect future space assets and astronauts from dangerous effects that arise from Moon/Mars dust exposure. 6. Studies using model organisms on ISS to understand the impact of the spaceflight environment on organisms in preparation for long-duration missions.

solar sail↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Open Science for Plants in Space: Data Sharing, Standards, and Informatics for Reuse and Knowledge Discovery

Upcoming deep space missions rely on plants and crops for crew and ecosystem health. Access to space plant data enables scientists to gain a deeper understanding of biological responses to ionizing radiation, altered gravity, low atmospheric pressure, elevated CO2, and altered photoperiods. Open Science is the practice of making research available to all, while respecting diverse cultures, fostering collaborations with equity. 2023 is the ‘Year of Open Science’, and NASA has a 5-year Transform to Open Science (TOPS) mission designed to rapidly transform the agency toward an inclusive culture of open science. NASA’s Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) developed by NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division provides access to data from space-relevant biological experiments. OSDR combines two databases, GeneLab and Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA) to maximize access to standardized ‘omics (e.g., transcriptomics, proteomics) and phenotypic data (e.g., microscopy, biomass), respectively. OSDR started in 2014 with the creation of the first space-relevant FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) biological ‘omics repository (GeneLab), providing detailed metadata on investigation, sample, and assay levels. Today, GeneLab hosts 62 plant datasets which have led to 5 published peer-reviewed meta-analysis publications. Most of these publications were collaboration efforts under the OSDR Analysis Working Groups (AWGs). AWGs provide great opportunities for investigators to collaborate and set new standards for space-relevant data and metadata. The AWGs are welcoming any ASPB members interested in providing plant expertise for space biology. The addition of ALSDA to OSDR is also expanding analysis capability beyond ‘omics. Now is the time to get involved as a Subject Matter Expert as we establish the framework for modern plant data archiving through the AWGs. Investigators are invited to submit their space-relevant plant datasets to OSDR and visit the site to learn about the tools OSDR has to offer (osdr.nasa.gov/bio).

FAIR↗
NASA NTRS2024

Tracking Community Building in Open Science

Open Science is enabled by a vibrant community of researchers who regularly engage with the data, from its production to its organization, curation, archiving, dissemination, analysis, and publication. This presentation will examine community building in open science. The NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) makes data available to the public following the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) principles. OSDR takes open science further with the OS Analysis Working Groups (AWGs) that facilitate community development and promotion. The primary activity of each AWG is to establish and validate analytical processes to generate higher-order data from data housed in OSDR. There are a number of these groups on various topics, including the Animal AWG, Plant AWG, Microbial AWG, Multi-Omics AWG, AI/ML AWG, and the Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA) AWG. The international volunteers participating in these AWGs come from academia, citizen science initiatives, industry, and government. They include researchers, principal investigators, professors, trained hobbyists, and students from various domains and disciplines. Anyone may request to join the AWGs, and membership requests are vetted monthly by the group organizers before granting admission. Core to membership is demonstrated expertise through records of training, integrity, work in the professed domain(s), and good community standing. Regular virtual meetings are held for each AWG, with a varying cadence depending on the group's needs and goals. AWG communities share their expertise in research including cutting edge tools, software, frameworks, data formats, and libraries accelerating research collectively. This collaborative approach helps community members cross technology gaps and identify emerging challenges. These diverse communities encompass a wide range of individuals hailing from various sectors within the Science Mission Directorate and beyond. They serve as a means to promote and enhance transparency, accessibility, and inclusion. An annual AWG Symposium brings contributors together in person. Participation in AWGs can be synchronous or asynchronous, with some groups performing most of their work in off hours. Participants gain valuable skills and connections that allow them to add value to their communities and new organizations that they join, resulting in an expanded return on investment for the space life science community. Open science is increasingly a federal mandate and initiatives like NASA's Transform to Open Science and instruments like the Decadal Survey of Biological and Physical Sciences in Space demonstrate the need to carefully consider best practices in this domain. Here, we present greater detail about the makeup and participation metrics of the various AWGs affiliated with OSDR and details of successful peer-reviewed publication campaigns.

Christina M Johnson↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Tracking Community Building in Open Science

Open Science is enabled by a vibrant community of researchers who regularly engage with the data, from its production to its organization, curation, archiving, dissemination, analysis, and publication. This presentation will examine community building in open science. The NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) makes data available to the public following the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) principles. OSDR takes open science further with the OS Analysis Working Groups (AWGs) that facilitate community development and promotion. The primary activity of each AWG is to establish and validate analytical processes to generate higher-order data from data housed in OSDR. There are a number of these groups on various topics, including the Animal AWG, Plant AWG, Microbial AWG, Multi-Omics AWG, AI/ML AWG, and the Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA) AWG. The international volunteers participating in these AWGs come from academia, citizen science initiatives, industry, and government. They include researchers, principal investigators, professors, trained hobbyists, and students from various domains and disciplines. Anyone may request to join the AWGs, and membership requests are vetted monthly by the group organizers before granting admission. Core to membership is demonstrated expertise through records of training, integrity, work in the professed domain(s), and good community standing. Regular virtual meetings are held for each AWG, with a varying cadence depending on the group's needs and goals. AWG communities share their expertise in research including cutting edge tools, software, frameworks, data formats, and libraries accelerating research collectively. This collaborative approach helps community members cross technology gaps and identify emerging challenges. These diverse communities encompass a wide range of individuals hailing from various sectors within the Science Mission Directorate and beyond. They serve as a means to promote and enhance transparency, accessibility, and inclusion. An annual AWG Symposium brings contributors together in person. Participation in AWGs can be synchronous or asynchronous, with some groups performing most of their work in off hours. Participants gain valuable skills and connections that allow them to add value to their communities and new organizations that they join, resulting in an expanded return on investment for the space life science community. Open science is increasingly a federal mandate and initiatives like NASA's Transform to Open Science and instruments like the Decadal Survey of Biological and Physical Sciences in Space demonstrate the need to carefully consider best practices in this domain. Here, we present greater detail about the makeup and participation metrics of the various AWGs affiliated with OSDR and details of successful peer-reviewed publication campaigns.

Christina M Johnson↗
NASA NTRS2005

In Situ Resource Utilization Technology Research and Facilities Supporting the NASA's Human Systems Research and Technology Life Support Program

The NASA Microgravity Science program has transitioned research required in support of NASA s Vision for Space Exploration. Research disciplines including the Materials Science, Fluid Physics and Combustion Science are now being applied toward projects with application in the planetary utilization and transformation of space resources. The scientific and engineering competencies and infrastructure in these traditional fields developed at multiple NASA Centers and by external research partners provide essential capabilities to support the agency s new exploration thrusts including In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). Among the technologies essential to human space exploration, the production of life support consumables, especially oxygen and; radiation shielding; and the harvesting of potentially available water are realistically achieved for long-duration crewed missions only through the use of ISRU. Ongoing research in the physical sciences have produced a body of knowledge relevant to the extraction of oxygen from lunar and planetary regolith and associated reduction of metals and silicon for use meeting manufacturing and repair requirements. Activities being conducted and facilities used in support of various ISRU projects at the Glenn Research Center and Marshall Space Flight Center will be described. The presentation will inform the community of these new research capabilities, opportunities, and challenges to utilize their materials, fluids and combustion science expertise and capabilities to support the vision for space exploration.

Schlagheck, Ronald A.↗
NASA NTRS1989

NASA-HBCU Space Science and Engineering Research Forum Proceedings

The proceedings of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) forum are presented. A wide range of research topics from plant science to space science and related academic areas was covered. The sessions were divided into the following subject areas: Life science; Mathematical modeling, image processing, pattern recognition, and algorithms; Microgravity processing, space utilization and application; Physical science and chemistry; Research and training programs; Space science (astronomy, planetary science, asteroids, moon); Space technology (engineering, structures and systems for application in space); Space technology (physics of materials and systems for space applications); and Technology (materials, techniques, measurements).

Sanders, Yvonne D.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Space life sciences perspectives for Space Station Freedom

It is now generally acknowledged that the life science discipline will be the primary beneficiary of Space Station Freedom. The unique facility will permit advances in understanding the consequences of long duration exposure to weightlessness and evaluation of the effectiveness of countermeasures. It will also provide an unprecedented opportunity for basic gravitational biology, on plants and animals as well as human subjects. The major advantages of SSF are the long duration exposure and the availability of sufficient crew to serve as subjects and operators. In order to fully benefit from the SSF, life sciences will need both sufficient crew time and communication abilities. Unlike many physical science experiments, the life science investigations are largely exploratory, and frequently bring unexpected results and opportunities for study of newly discovered phenomena. They are typically crew-time intensive, and require a high degree of specialized training to be able to react in real time to various unexpected problems or potentially exciting findings. Because of the long duration tours and the large number of experiments, it will be more difficult than with Spacelab to maintain astronaut proficiency on all experiments. This places more of a burden on adequate communication and data links to the ground, and suggests the use of AI expert system technology to assist in astronaut management of the experiment. Typical life science experiments, including those flown on Spacelab Life Sciences 1, will be described from the point of view of the demands on the astronaut. A new expert system, 'PI in a Box,' will be introduced for SLS-2, and its applicability to other SSF experiments discussed. (This paper consists on an abstract and ten viewgraphs.)

Young, Laurence R.↗
NASA NTRS2019

The Kon-Tiki Mission – Demonstrating Large Solar Sails for Deep Space Missions

Two key NASA strategic documents, Our Dynamic Space Environment: Heliophysics Science and Technology Roadmap for 2014-2033 and 2013 Solar and Space Physics: Science for a Technological Society, contain over a dozen references describing the value of solar sails to enable revolutionary new observational capabilities. Based on these needs, the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) developed the Kon-Tiki mission concept to mature solar sail technology for use in future Heliophysics missions, as well as missions of interest across a broad user community (e.g., space weather and Earth polar observatories). Kon-Tiki would serve as a pathfinder for missions that observe the solar environment from unique vantage points such as the Solar Polar Imager (SPI), opening a fundamentally new range of observational capabilities for the Heliophysics Program and for space weather monitoring. Observations away from the Sun-Earth line (SEL) present unique opportunities for answering the outstanding science questions of Heliophysics, for improving space-weather monitoring and prediction, and for revealing new discoveries about our Sun and solar system. High solar inclinations are particularly compelling. Investment in, and demonstration of, the technology needed to enable polar missions is essential to making this unique vantage point a reality in the next decade. Propellantless solar sails can be used to create artificial equilibria and indefinite station-keeping at locations sunward of L1 along the SEL, or at any desired offset from the SEL leading or trailing the Earth in its orbit. They can change the heliocentric inclination of a spacecraft from the ecliptic to as high as solar polar, stopping and remaining at any intermediate inclination orbit in between. Sails can be used to hover over the Earth’s poles, using solar photon pressure to offset the Earth’s gravitational attraction, creating functional equivalents of geostationary earth orbits. The Kon-Tiki mission would fly a small spacecraft with a large (>1200 square meter) solar sail containing embedded reflectivity control devices (RCDs) and photovoltaic cells. The mission concept includes successful deployment of the solar sail, validation of all sail subsystems, controlled station-keeping inside of the Sun-Earth L1 point, attitude control of the sail with the RCDs (including spinning and despinning), demonstration of pointing performance for science imaging, and finally an increase in heliocentric inclination (out of the ecliptic).

Johnson, Les↗
NASA NTRS2021

Space Biology Beyond LEO Instrumentation & Science Series - Science Working Group 2021 Annual Report

Human space exploration was never intended to stop within low Earth orbit (LEO). Although nearly all of biological research in space has taken place in LEO, on the Space Shuttle, International Space Station (ISS), and free-flyer CubeSat missions, NASA's recent shift in emphasis toward human exploration of the Moon and ultimately Mars necessitates a shift in the focus of its research in the biological sciences [1]. Specifically, in 2022 and beyond, the Division of Biological and Physical Sciences seeks to pivot toward a focus on Thriving In DEep Space (TIDES), furthering the fundamental research necessary for understanding risks and mitigation strategies for deep-space stressors on human crew, plants, and their microbiomes. This effort entails both research on model organisms to elucidate the molecular processes underlying the biological consequences of deep-space exposure, and research on the organisms that will be necessary companions to sustain life and facilitate resource utilization in long-duration missions.

R Craig Everroad↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Astronaut Medical Selection

Invited panel presentation to The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine - A Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars: Panel on Biological and Physical Sciences and Human Factors.

astronaut medical selection↗
NASA NTRS1994

Numeric data distribution: The vital role of data exchange in today's world

The major aim of the NIST standard Reference Data Program (SRD) is to provide critically evaluated numeric data to the scientific and technical community in a convenient and accessible form. A second aim of the program is to provide feedback into the experimental and theoretical programs to help raise the general standards of measurement. By communicating the experience gained in evaluating the world output of data in the physical sciences, NIST/SRD helps to advance the level of experimental techniques and improve the reliability of physical measurements.

Chase, Malcolm W.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Light Microscopy Module: On-Orbit Microscope Planned for the Fluids Integrated Rack on the International Space Station

The Light Microscopy Module (LMM) is planned as a remotely controllable, automated, on-orbit facility, allowing flexible scheduling and control of physical science and biological science experiments within the Fluids Integrated Rack (FIR) on the International Space Station. Initially four fluid physics experiments in the FIR will use the LMM the Constrained Vapor Bubble, the Physics of Hard Spheres Experiment-2, Physics of Colloids in Space-2, and Low Volume Fraction Entropically Driven Colloidal Assembly. The first experiment will investigate heat conductance in microgravity as a function of liquid volume and heat flow rate to determine, in detail, the transport process characteristics in a curved liquid film. The other three experiments will investigate various complementary aspects of the nucleation, growth, structure, and properties of colloidal crystals in microgravity and the effects of micromanipulation upon their properties.

Motil, Susan M.↗
NASA NTRS2012

NASA Space Science Days: An Out of School Program Using National Partnerships to Further Influence Future Scientists and Engineers.

The National Math and Science Initiative states that American students are falling behind in the essential subjects of math and science, putting our position in the global economy at risk a foreboding statement that has caused the U.S. to re-evaluate how we view STEM education. Developing science and engineering related out of school programs that expose middle school students to math and science in a nontraditional university environment has the potential to motivate young students to look at the physical sciences in an exciting out of the norm environment.

Galindo, Charles↗
NASA NTRS2002

Mission Overview STS-107: Providing 24/7 Space Science Research

Columbia's 16-day mission is dedicated to a mixed complement of competitively selected and commercially sponsored research in the space, life and physical sciences. An international crew of seven, including the first Israeli astronaut, will work 24 hours a day in two alternating shifts to carry out experiments in the areas of astronaut health and safety; advanced technology development; and Earth and space sciences.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1960

Research Summary No. 36-3, Volume I, Part II

The Research Summary is a bimonthly report of supporting research and development conducted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This periodical is issued in three volumes. Volume I contains summaries of the work accomplished by the Space Sciences, Systems, Guidance and Control, and Telecommunications Divisions of the Laboratory. Volume II contains summaries of the work accomplished by the Physical Sciences, Engineering Mechanics, Engineering Facilities, and Propulsion Divisions. All work of a classified nature is contained in Volume Ill.

Source record↗