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Melanie Saunders

NASA’s 2017 astronaut candidates stop to take a group photo while getting fitted for flight suits at Ellington Field near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. After receiving a record-breaking number of applications to join an exciting future of space exploration, NASA has selected its largest astronaut class since 2000. Rising to the top of more than 18,300 applicants, NASA chose these 12 women and men as the agency’s new astronaut candidates. Pictured are, front row, left to right, Zena Cardman, Jasmin Moghbeli, Robb Kulin, Jessica Watkins, Loral O’Hara; back row, left to right, Jonny Kim, Frank Rubio, Matthew Dominick, Warren Hoburg, Kayla Barron, Bob Hines and Raja Chari.

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Doing Things DifferentlyTHE AGENCY HAS BEEN GOING THROUGH a period of significant change the past few years, and Johnson Space Center has been no exception to that. We are part of new missions, new destinations in the solar system and new ways of doing business. All our major change initiatives, from JSC 2.0 to the Technical Capability Assessment Team (TCAT), Strategic Acquisition Forecast Evaluation, Business Service Assessment and others have all been designed to move us forward in doing things differently. You have heard agency leaders, like Acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot, speak about moving to a new operating model. These activities further that goal. While there have been significant alterations on the technical side of the house (TCAT, for example, and Commercial Crew), many of the changes have been in the mission support portfolio. The changes, while sometimes daunting, will enable us to be more effective in advancing human space exploration. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is here at JSC this year for testing. Like Hubble, we know JWST will fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe. We just went through a change in administration, and we should soon have a new NASA administrator. We are breaking records regularly with the International Space Station and working vigorously on Orion, which will take us to different areas of the cosmos and require new methods of exploring space. We will have to select and train crews differently. We will need to do mission control differently. We will need to medically support the crew differently. Crew return and postflight activities will, again, be different from what we have been accustomed to in the shuttle and space station eras. What always fascinates me is that we take all of this change in stride. Need to adjust how we do real-time operations? No problem, we’ll get it done. Need to figure out how to train the crew so they can operate more autonomously? We’ll do it. But when it comes to changing how we manage mission support, allocate resources, do hiring or plan Information Technology investments … these changes seem to elicit more conflict, resistance and debate. Why is that? I think it’s because we have internalized and accepted that we need to change mission preparation for new environments. We understand that the environment and thus, the work, will be vastly dissimilar. The proving ground is different than low-Earth orbit. Mars is an even stranger beast. However, the fact remains that we have already been operating in a different environment on the mission support side—and for several years. It’s just harder to see. We’re all so busy trying to get our work done that we may not have realized how the world has changed around us. The reason things have been bumpy is because we haven’t adapted to our new reality. I wish our Center Management and Operations (CMO) budget was going up. I wish it were even staying flat, because that would be an improvement over what is really going on—cuts each year and sustained loss of buying power due to inflation and rising personnel costs. This is our “new area of the cosmos” in which we need to operate and

support the mission. Nobody is going to come in and give us more money. If there is more money, it’s going into the mission budget. This is why I am conducting a zero-base review of CMO this year. We can’t keep doing what we’ve always done if we want to be successful. And—we want to be successful. Our missions can’t succeed without us. We work at a place where some of our employees don’t work on the planet. We work at a place where people buy tickets to come tour. We work at a place that makes people associate us with excellence, grace under pressure, courage and imagination, and the boldness to try new things and solve really hard problems. I don’t want to be the frog that realizes, all too late, that the pot of water it’s in is starting to boil. Together, let’s plan to figure out how to turn down the heat by doing things differently, and even walking away from some things altogether. Painful? Yes. Scary? You bet. Necessary? Absolutely. Now? Later is not an option. I joined NASA because I wanted to be part of building the International Space Station. I stayed because I want to be part of getting to Mars. If this is what it takes to help get there, I’m all for it.

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NASA Johnson Space Center’s “Chamber A” in Houston is an enormous thermal vacuum testing chamber that appears to be opening its “mouth” to take in NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope for testing. The telescope and the Integrated Science Instrument Module are two of the three major elements that comprise the observatory’s flight system and are being lifted into the chamber in this photo. The other is the Spacecraft Element (spacecraft bus and sunshield), which is currently under construction at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California.

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Universe, meet James Webb (the telescope)

BEFORE THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE leaves Earth for the outer recesses of the solar system in late 2018, it will get acquainted with deep space first at NASA’s Johnson Space Center—more specifically, in a rotund thermal vacuum chamber affectionately known to most Johnson team members as “Chamber A.” Inside what looks to be a cream-colored soda can of epic proportions will be NASA’s newest space-based observatory. This infrared telescope will, for the next decade, serve thousands of astronomers worldwide and study many phases in the history of our universe. Its sophisticated instruments will decode the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life and the evolution of our own tiny cosmic corner. But before it gets there, it must be tested here. “Once we pump down (the chamber), we’re estimating at least a 93-day test if everything goes well,” said Jonathan Homan, Johnson’s project manager for testing the James Webb Space Telescope. Homan estimates that everything will go well—in fact, be successful—thanks to a series of Pathfinder tests that were run in the chamber before the actual telescope’s arrival in early May. With the telescope’s engineering unit, the chamber ran three simulations, including a thermal Pathfinder evaluation, to help plan out how to integrate the final test of the telescope worth a cool $4 billion. “It really let us know the predictions thermally and how we can get all the optical tests done correctly,” Homan said. “So it was very, very valuable. All these activities that we’re doing now were practiced with the Pathfinder unit.”


With the Pathfinder series and following test this summer and fall that will go approximately a hundred days, the chamber replicates the actual environment the telescope will be exposed to out in L-2, or the second Lagrange point. One million miles from the creature comforts of our home planet, Webb will stay in line with Earth as it moves around the sun. The satellite’s hulking sunshield will protect the telescope from the light and heat of the sun, Earth and moon. However, on the other side of the sunshield, things get seriously frigid for the science hardware and mirrors. Like a minus 388 degrees Fahrenheit better-not-forget-your-coat-before-you-go-outside kind of bone chill.

“Chamber A used to be more lunar, low-Earth-orbit-type testing,” Homan said. “Now we’re doing deep space. We made the modifications from 2009 to 2012 to change the chamber over from the Apollo requirements to the Webb requirements. Their big things, which were not probably big things on Apollo, are vibration, contamination, a much colder environment and significantly longer testing.” When inside, the telescope will be suspended in the chamber—floating—free from any possible vibrations. Although a stunning starscape backdrop will be missing, bitter temperatures will abound. “There’s not another facility that can do what this chamber does now,” Homan noted. “We have become so efficient performance-wise. Thermally, we’ve not just met the requirements, we’ve exceeded those requirements. The chamber actually acts as a cleanroom, because the helium shroud, which needs to be dark (light tight) and cold, allows clean air to flow from the top to bottom. Now, inside the chamber, we can create the environment of deep space—extremely dark and cold.” Webb, while being assessed at Johnson, will be exposed to 19.8 Kelvin (minus 424 degrees Fahrenheit)—temps so numbingly cold that only a bit of helium molecules and a dash of hydrogen will still have the wherewithal to circulate. “Oxygen’s not moving, nitrogen’s not moving in that environment,” Homan said. “Everything is frozen out, creating a deep vacuum, which is what [the telescope] needs to be able to detect the early light of the universe.”

It’s springtime and the deployed primary mirror of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope looks like a flower in full bloom. In this photo, NASA technicians lifted the telescope using a crane and moved it inside a cleanroom at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Once launched into space, the Webb telescope’s 18-segment gold mirror is specially designed to capture infrared light from the first galaxies that formed in the early universe, and will help the telescope peer inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today.

PHOTO: NASA/DESIREE STOVER


This three-month-and-counting test will determine if the telescope is ready for the hostile environs of L-2. “So the big thing is, again, thermal performance,” Homan said. “Do the spacecraft thermal systems and flight predictions and modeling match up with what they expect? The thermal Pathfinder was a big one to prove that out—that we should. And two, even more important, are the optics. Hubble did not get tested optically, in a space-like environment, with the full integrated optics like Webb. We are taking Webb to its orbital-like conditions, getting the mirrors down to orbit-predicted temperatures, and then testing the mirrors.” Interestingly, the telescope’s optics are not yet in focus. That comes later, with the cold. “The mirrors, they look really nice here, but they’re not in perfect prescription until the mirrors are down below 40 Kelvin,” Homan said. It’s a feature that was built into the science instrument, taking into consideration its final destination, and most certainly not a bug. Part of the beauty of testing in a simulated deep space environment while in the confines of the chamber is gauging that crucial optical performance. If the mirror segments align perfectly the first time, great. If not, the chamber provides a safe space for changes. “Each of the different mirror segments and the science instruments, they’re all communicating,” Homan said. “And if they’re not, we can test that out and make the adjustments. If it looks like we’re not quite right, let’s reposition something slightly. We have the fine actuators that can move things fractions of an inch. When the optical guys say ‘Yes, I’m seeing what I expect,’ that’s very successful.”

This legacy photo from May 2015 shows the fifth floor of thermal vacuum Chamber A that now is being used for an end-to-end test of the James Webb Space Telescope. This photo was taken before the start of a test on the Webb telescope Pathfinder, an engineering version of the telescope. Here, the contamination control engineer on the left is doing his final FOD (Foreign Object Debris) inspection. In the center of this image, wrapped in the silver thermal blanketing, is the CoCoa (Center of Curvature optical assembly). CoCoa tests on the Webb telescope’s concave mirror segments are critical, because they will tell engineers if all of the mirrors work together to make a telescope that has the correct shape.

This photo shows Northrop Grumman’s

huge full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope being displayed for the public from Jan. 27 to Feb. 5 during Super Bowl Live in Houston

near Discovery Green.

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The simulation for Webb will be wrapped up by the end of the calendar year, and perhaps even as soon as late fall. Afterward, it will get its sunshield attached at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems and undergo one more vibration test before transport to French Guiana, the launch site. That will be the last contact with Earth before hurtling to its destiny. It’s taken an integrated team as immense as the science instrument itself and a careful orchestration of teamwork to bring the telescope to life. Those working on Webb while it’s at the center include professionals from Goddard Space Flight Center, Harris, Northrop Grumman, Ball Aerospace and, of course, a large Johnson support team. Within Johnson, the Crew and Thermal Systems Division, Center Operations, Flight Operations, Jacobs Engineering and others are tending to Webb. “We’ve had about 50 people in the chamber and the cleanroom,” Homan said. “But we’ve had hundreds of people at Johnson directly supporting, either the buildup or the test.” Although the care and evaluation of this space observatory is not something that is the norm for Johnson, the nucleus of human space exploration, everyone working on it recognizes it for the honor it is. “I love that here at Johnson we focus on exploration,” Homan said. “I’ve done lots of manned tests with astronauts, and I think that is really amazing and we need to stay focused on human space exploration. But it’s also really cool to work with some great scientists and know that what they plan to get out of Webb will change history and our physics books. Whatever we see from Hubble, this is going so much further back and has much different and bigger optical properties. We’re going to learn a lot more.”


Johnson Space Center team members close to the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST’s) preparation and testing operations share what they hope the telescope will reveal about the universe and their feelings about being a part of the buildup toward its launch in 2018.

Sharing the excitement

GretchenThomasTEST DIRECTORCompany: NASA

“My favorite part of having JWST here has been the challenges of working with such a large team with so many test objectives and test events. The series of tests that we have performed have been building in complexity over the years, and it will be fun to actually run the facility with the real flight hardware in place and see how it performs. I’ve enjoyed successfully running the chamber at the extremely low vacuum levels and super-cold temperatures that we have to achieve for the telescope, knowing that there is no other facility in the world that can do that.”

Andrew FrancisTEST DIRECTORCompany: Jacobs

“I am hopeful JWST will help identify and provide glimpses of the formation of the first galaxies and stars in our universe. Really, I hope the JWST will eventually be held in the same high regard as the Hubble [Space] Telescope. To be part of something so ambitious, with the potential to help understand the origins of the universe, can’t be beat. To be able to be part of a project like JWST is a once-in-a-career opportunity.”

Kenneth AnderleFACILITY TEST OPERATIONS MANAGERCompany: Jacobs

“I make it a point each day to take a moment and look upon the telescope as it is being prepared for testing in Building 32, reflecting on how amazing it truly is. My employees and I have dedicated much of our lives over the past 10 to 12 years preparing for this test, and it is very rewarding to see that our efforts are helping to provide humankind an instrument of exploration unlike any ever imagined.”


Mary HalliganBUILDING 32 FACILITY MANAGER, FACILITY ENGINEERCompany: NASA

“My favorite part of having JWST at JSC is seeing all the excitement and wonder that this brings to my fellow workers and the general public.”

Gary GastlerPROJECT MANAGERCompany: NASA

“I hope [Webb] will see more evidence of the existence of other worlds that could sustain life. [I have enjoyed seeing] the notoriety and publicity it’s given to JSC.”

Greg StigginsELECTRICAL, DATA AND CONTROLS SECTION MANAGERCompany: Jacobs

“I’m hoping the telescope reveals details on how the first galaxies in the universe formed. The idea that JWST might be able to see the first light after the Big Bang is incredible. The energy and excitement surrounding the JWST project has been great, especially in these last few weeks since the telescope arrived at JSC. There were many challenges over the years as we prepared Chamber A for this test, and it is very satisfying to see it all come together.”

Jamie GarzaCONTROL SYSTEMS ENGINEERCompany: Jacobs

“I think I’m most interested in the possibility of actual imaging of exoplanets, as well as just generally seeing as far back in the universe’s history as possible. Though it has been rewarding bringing the various Chamber A upgrades online over the past few years, my favorite part of JWST being here has yet to happen. That moment will come at the end of a successful test here in Building 32. While not as dramatic as the Mars Curiosity ‘Seven Minutes of Terror,’ we will have a solid ‘90-plus days of anticipation’ as the test is conducted over this summer. With many preliminary chamber tests, we’ve prepared well though, so we’re ready to go.”


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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover examined a mudstone outcrop area called “Pahrump Hills” on lower Mount Sharp, in 2014 and 2015. This view shows locations of some targets the rover studied. The blue dots indicate where drilled samples of powdered rock were collected for analysis.

JSC scientists find evidence of diverse environments in Curiosity samplesNASA SCIENTISTS HAVE FOUND a wide diversity of minerals in the initial samples of rocks collected by the Curiosity rover in the lowermost layers of Mount Sharp on Mars, suggesting that conditions changed in the water environments on the planet over time. “We have all this evidence that Mars was once really wet but now is dry and cold,” said Elizabeth Rampe, the first author of the study and a NASA exploration mission scientist at Johnson. “Today, much of the water is locked up in the poles and in the ground at high latitudes as ice.” Curiosity landed near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater in August 2012 and reached the base of the mountain in 2014. Layers of rocks at the base of Mount Sharp accumulated as sediment within ancient lakes around 3.5 billion years ago. Orbital infrared spectroscopy shows that the mountain’s lowermost layers have variations in minerals that suggest changes in the ancient environments. In a paper published recently in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, scientists in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center report on the first four samples collected from the lower layers of Mount Sharp. “We went to Gale Crater to investigate these lower layers of Mount Sharp that have these minerals that precipitated from water and suggest different environments,” Rampe said. “These layers were deposited about 3.5 billion years ago, coinciding with a time on Earth when life was beginning to take hold. We think early Mars may have been similar to early Earth, and so these environments might have been habitable.” The minerals found in the four samples drilled near the base of Mount Sharp suggest several different environments were present in ancient Gale Crater. There is evidence for waters with different pH and variably oxidizing conditions. The minerals also show that there were multiple source regions for the rocks in “Pahrump Hills” and “Marias Pass.” The paper primarily reports on three samples from the Pahrump Hills region, an outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp that contains sedimentary rocks scientists believe formed in a lake. The other sample, called “Buckskin,” was reported last year, but that data is incorporated into the paper. At the base of the Pahrump Hills are minerals from a primitive magma source; they are rich in iron and magnesium, similar to basalts

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in Hawaii. Moving higher in the section, scientists saw more silica-rich minerals. In the “Buckskin” sample, scientists found tridymite. Tridymite is found on Earth, for example, in rocks that formed from partial melting of Earth’s crust—a strange finding, because Mars never had plate tectonics. Scientists found clay minerals at the base, which generally form in the presence of liquid water with a near-neutral pH, and therefore could be good indicators of past environments that were conducive to life. Another mineral discovered here was jarosite, a salt that forms in acidic solutions, suggesting that there were acidic fluids at some point in time in this region. Hematite was found near the base, and only magnetite was found at the top. Hematite contains oxidized iron, whereas magnetite contains both oxidized and reduced forms of iron. The authors attribute this mineralogical diversity to the development of later-stage fluids. After the sediments were deposited, acidic, oxidizing groundwater moved into the area, leading to precipitation of jarosite and hematite. In this scenario, the environmental conditions present in the lake and in later groundwater were quite different, but both offered liquid water and a chemical diversity that could have been exploited by microbial life. “We think that the rocks Curiosity has studied reveal ancient environmental changes that occurred as Mars started to lose its atmosphere and water was lost to space,” Rampe said.


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Mars Science Laboratory Operations Center now open

NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the purple-hued rocks near the rover’s late-2016 location on lower Mount Sharp. The scene’s middle distance includes higher layers that are future destinations for the mission. Curiosity’s tasks are scheduled, in part, by NASA Johnson Space Center’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division team members in the all-new Mars Science Laboratory Operations Center, which makes collaborating on Martian missions much easier to do with teams throughout the nation’s space agency.

The Mars science team from NASA Johnson Space Center’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division provides mission support from the Mars Science Laboratory Operations Center.

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THE MARS SCIENCE TEAM of the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center now has a new “space” to call home for planetary surface operations. Located in Johnson’s Building 29, the brand-new Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Operations Center functions as a mini Mission Control Center for the ARES science team, where they conduct experiments remotely for Curiosity as it roves the terrain of the Red Planet, unlocking the mysteries of Mars’ past and present environments. ARES supports the daily rover operations on Mars to improve our understanding of the planet. Additionally, ARES scientists virtually serve on Opportunity and Curiosity teams to plan and implement science objectives. “The MSL ops center enables us to better support Curiosity’s exploration of Mars,” said Doug Archer, a Mars scientist at Johnson. “Having the ops center has enabled us to participate in remote meetings as a group, which facilitates more discussion and a better understanding of what we’re seeing on Mars.” The brand-new center provides a designated space for Johnson’s scientists to meet and discuss upcoming objectives for Curiosity. While half of this specialized control room functions as a collaborative space, the other half is equipped with individual workstations, where scientists can work privately. “We have workstations in the ops room that have a lot of screen real estate, which is incredibly useful because we use many tools simultaneously,” Archer said. “Being able to see them all at the same time helps us get our jobs done without missing anything.” From inside the center, the team can review data from the previous day, pull up current imagery taken from Mars or decide what science tasks they want Curiosity to tackle next. Whether that means taking additional photographs of a specified area on the surface or using instruments on Curiosity such as the Sample Analysis at Mars tool to unveil the crystalline structure in Martian samples, the MSL-dedicated space helps ARES take part in missions like never before.

The technology-driven area also gives ARES scientists the ability to collaborate remotely—and with greater ease—with other centers like NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “We are on the science team [at Johnson], but JPL is where all the rover planners and other engineering folks sit,” Archer said. “It’s the science team that’s distributed across the country and in a few international locations as well.” Additionally, the MSL Operations Center has the capability to convert, if needed, to work surface operations for another exciting rover mission on the docket: Mars 2020. “JSC has had people working Mars mission ops for over a decade,” Archer said. “Having an ops center that can support multiple people working simultaneously, as well as meeting in a collaborative work space, will help us maintain the work we’re doing and move forward with future Mars exploration.” For more information on ARES, go to: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/astromaterials

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T+20 years and counting

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IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR THAT SPECIAL 20-year anniversary gift for NASA Johnson Space Center’s legendary Sonny Carter Training Facility (SCTF), home of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) and its titanic pool, traditional china and modern platinum options might not be the thing. More appreciated, however, would be nitrox, a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen the divers and astronauts training underwater use to breathe. To date, the facility has gone through more than 95 million cubic feet of it—enough to fill NRG Stadium. In fact, despite the conclusion of the Space Shuttle Program and finished assembly of the International Space Station, the NBL still maintains a full schedule of event support. “We just had three spacewalks in the last four weeks,” said Raytheon NBL Operations Manager Kurt Otten. “There’s a lot of times we have real-time mission support, where they’ll come over and do a suited event or configured scuba just to validate the process and procedures that they’re going to do up in space for the EVA [Extravehicular Activity, or spacewalk].” Astronaut spacewalk training is still the NBL’s “bread and butter,” so to speak, but other new operations have entered the mix. “We used to do dual ops, where we would run two suited runs simultaneously—have two astronauts here and two astronauts there, and they would all be in the dive tank at one time doing different things, but training at the same time,” Otten said. Now, while a broad section of the pool accommodates NASA’s needs, the other caters to specialized commercial interests.

“There’s a permanent ROV [Remotely Operated Vehicle] here from Oceaneering,” Otten said. “The ROV is what is used offshore. So it’s just like space—plan, train, fly. With the ROV, same thing.” Due to the nature of hazardous operations offshore, Otten noted that companies don’t want their divers out on the oil rigs unnecessarily. Instead, they come to the NBL and check out their tools and procedures in the safety of our pool. “They can remove risk by doing it here,” Otten said. “Otherwise, they’re paying $100,000 a day testing offshore [adding more costs], and then they actually have to go and do the job.” And, as technology continues to rapidly advance, the infrastructure at the SCTF has responded with its

own upgrades to support operations for space station, Commercial Crew, Orion and NASA’s eventual journey to Mars. “We’re always trying to keep up with what’s out there, that way we can accommodate any new technology,” Otten said. “There’s nothing that we can’t do—it’s just whether we can constrain it within our schedules with all the other training. Today, we have spacesuits in the water at the same time we have an ROV in the water, or a Micro-g NExT [Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams] event and commercial or Aircraft Operations Directorate [AOD] water survival going on. It has become a

very reachable facility over the years.” The future of the NBL is as bright as the new white

coat of paint adorning its walls. “The ultimate thing is to train the crew

here,” Otten said. That’s especially true of NASA’s newest human space exploration

program, Orion, which will rely on oceanic splashdowns. “[The crew must] familiarize themselves for the water landing—how to get out of the seats, out the door and into their life raft. And, in case that doesn’t work out right,

we have to train the rescue divers and pararescue specialists in the military that

support the landings.” Further down the road, there’s always the option to explore other worlds—and NASA has

many facilities, including the NBL, for such lofty goals. “A lot of folks feel that we can actually make some type of terrain on the bottom of

the pool and simulate one-sixth G [gravity] by changing the buoyancy in their suit,” Otten

said. “That’s what we do right now. We make them neutral in their suit so they don’t go up or

down, and they perform a spacewalk from end to end.” Otten indicated that with alien terrain and adjusted gravitational force, astronauts could practice walks on the moon and Mars. For an added bonus, the test conductors could throw malfunctions at the crew, like have their rovers quit working or spacesuit issues. The possibilities in making NASA’s explorers battle hardened for the solar system are almost as endless as the pool’s shimmering surface. The SCTF is more than a colossal pool, though. Lesser known is the logistic mock-up facility connected to it, which has a full-fledged machine, welding and sheet metal shop. That’s where a lot of the mock-ups used for training are built, as well as one-of-a-kind parts needed for AOD. While NASA’s missions have changed in the past 20 years, some of the NBL’s fundamental characteristics, which have made it so successful, have not. “It’s a landmark facility,” Otten said. “Just listening to the astronauts talk, the NBL is very needed to continue their training to make them successful in space.”

If you were alive when the

NBL completed its first training exercise on Jan. 7, 1997, the world was a little different. Twenty years ago …

• The Houston Oilers football team moved to Tennessee.

• The Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl XXXI (for the first time since 1967).

• Gas was a cheap $1.23 per gallon.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 7,000 for the first time.

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Pull up a floaty and enjoy these fun facts:• 150 spacewalks and counting have been rehearsed in the pool, including 13 in support of the Hubble Space Telescope.

• The NBL provided training for 54 space shuttle flights and every space station crew.

• Operations have included more than 326,000 hours of diving and 4,480 suited events.

• The lab was built in 1991 as a processing facility for Space Station Freedom, now the International Space Station.

• Pool stats: 102 feet wide, 202 feet long and 40 feet deep.

• It took 30 days to fill the pool, and then 30 days to clean the water once filled.

• The pool floor is 6 feet thick, while the walls range from 2.5 to 5 feet thick.

• The facility has moved 60,000 tons of mock-ups in its lifetime.

• Its water is chlorinated like your run-of-the-mill backyard pool and stays a temperate 86 degrees.

• How many gallons of water are in there? Try 6.2 million.

• The NBL pool, if filled with jet fuel, would fuel flights for Aircraft Operations more than six years.

• The pool has been recirculated more than 9,700 times, which translates to about 60 billion gallons moving through the pipes.


Astronaut Peggy Whitson participates in Aircraft Operations Directorate water survival training at the NBL.

View of Earth with an NBL patch from the International Space Station during the STS-126 mission.

Orion’s Exploration Flight Test-1 landing recovery with Flight Lead Tim Goddard from the NBL installing the rope harness around the spacecraft.

Former flight director Milt Heflin addresses the crowd at the NBL 20th anniversary celebration and speaks about his experiences working with the Apollo Spacecraft Recovery Team.

Astronaut Chris Cassidy addresses the NBL crowd.

NBL 20th anniversary service award recipients.

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The Roundup is an official publication of the NationalAeronautics and Space Administration, Johnson SpaceCenter, Houston, Texas, and is published by the External Relations Office for all Space Center employees.The Roundup office is located at the Johnson Space Center, Building 2. The mail code is AD94. Visit our website at: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/roundup/roundup_toc.htmlFor distribution questions or to suggest a story idea, send an email to [email protected].

Catherine Ragin Williams EditorLogan Goodson Graphic DesignLynnette Madison NASA Publication Manager

PRSRT STDU.S. POSTAGE

PAIDWEBSTER.TXPermit No. 39

OR CURRENT RESIDENT

Investigation aims to identify unknown microbes in spaceB Y J E N N Y H O W A R D

Student Anna-Sophia Boguraev, winner of the Genes in Space competition, is pictured with the miniPCR device. The miniPCR will be used with the minION to prepare, sequence and identify a microorganism from start to finish aboard the space station.

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BUILDING ON THE ABILITY TO SEQUENCE DNA in space and previous investigations, Genes in Space-3 is a collaboration to prepare, sequence and identify unknown organisms entirely from space. When NASA astronaut Kate Rubins sequenced DNA aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2016, it was a game changer. That first-ever sequencing of DNA in space was part of the Biomolecule Sequencer investigation. Although it’s not as exciting as a science-fiction movie may depict, the walls and surfaces of the space station do experience microbial growth from time to time. Currently, the only way to identify contaminants is to take a sample and send it back to Earth. “We have had contamination in parts of the station where fungi was seen growing or biomaterial has been pulled out of a clogged waterline, but we have no idea what it is until the sample gets back down to the lab,” said Sarah Wallace, NASA microbiologist and the project’s principal investigator at the NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “On the ISS, we can regularly resupply disinfectants, but as we move beyond low-Earth orbit, where the ability for resupply is less frequent, knowing what to disinfect or not becomes very important,” Wallace said. Developed in partnership by NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Boeing, this ISS National Lab-sponsored investigation will marry two pieces of existing spaceflight technology, miniPCR and the MinION DNA sequencer, to change that process, allowing for the first unknown biological samples to be prepared, sequenced and then identified in space.

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The miniPCR (polymerase chain reaction) device was first used aboard the station during the Genes in Space-1 and soon-to-be Genes in Space-2 investigations, student-designed experiments in the Genes in Space program. Genes in Space-1 successfully demonstrated the device could be

used in microgravity to amplify DNA, a process used to create thousands of copies of specific sections of DNA. The second investigation arrived at the space station on April 22 and will be tested this summer.

Next came the Biomolecule Sequencer investigation, which successfully tested the MinION’s ability to sequence strands of Earth-prepared DNA in an orbiting laboratory.

“Coupling these different devices [allows] us to take the lab to the samples instead of us having to bring the samples to the lab,” said Aaron Burton, NASA biochemist and Genes in Space-3 co-investigator.

Crew members will collect a sample from within the space station to be cultured aboard the orbiting laboratory. The sample will then be prepared for sequencing in a process similar to the one used during the Genes in Space-1 investigation using the miniPCR and, finally, sequenced and identified using the MinION device.

In addition to identifying microbes in space, this technology could be used to diagnose crew member wounds or illnesses in real time, help identify DNA-based life on other planets and help with other investigations aboard the station. Closer to home, this process can be used to provide real-time diagnosis of viruses in areas of the world where

access to a laboratory may not be possible. Read the full story here: https://go.usa.gov/xNvK4

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