Astronauts Welcome Super Bowl Fans and Explore Gut Microbes

Astronauts Peggy Whitson and Shane Kimbrough
Astronauts Peggy Whitson and Shane Kimbrough called down to Houston and welcomed football fans to Super Bowl LI festivities. Credit: NASA/James Blair

A pair of NASA astronauts on the International Space Station called down to Houston today as the city gets ready to host Super Bowl LI on Sunday. Johnson Space Center officials, media and visitors gathered at Space Center Houston to hear Expedition 50 Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson and Commander Shane Kimbrough welcome everyone as NASA participates in Super Bowl festivities this week.

As NASA and the city of Houston welcome football fans, the Expedition 50 crew aboard the International Space Station continued advanced space research to benefit humans on Earth and in space.

The astronauts explored how the immune system adapts in outer space by collecting their biological samples for the Multi-Omics study. The experiment, which began in March 2015 when the One-Year mission began, is researching gut microbes and metabolism to determine how living in space affects the human immune function.

Scientists and engineers are using the station as a platform to explore technologies for removing space debris from Earth orbit and returning samples from planetary surfaces. The crew members set up tiny internal multi-use satellites known as SPHERES to demonstrate capturing a space object and tugging it. Researchers are testing software to improve computer models to make space safer from space junk and improve planetary science.


Get weekly video highlights at: http://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

11 thoughts on “Astronauts Welcome Super Bowl Fans and Explore Gut Microbes”

  1. Dear Sirs ,
    It is a very important to work in the field of Genetic Engineering to develop and find a new sorts of bacterias which are able to extract Oxygen and Water as well as another important elements from Mars’s rocks complex component ,( this could happens via qualifying some known sorts of bacterias to live in a different and harder environment gradually) , and send these developed bacteria to The Mars planet as soon as possible , where it could regards as one of most important steps of the procedure of qualifying Mars planet for the life .
    Therefore we should move a boldly in this field and seriously and to get a required and successfully results in this field.
    Sincerely.
    Armen Ohan

  2. Note: There are some sorts of trees and animals in the world are able to live a hard life circumstances as dry cold weathers ( deserts ) , may they take the priority in these researches, to be qualify living in a harder environment such the environment of Mars planet via being qualify to live on ground which have the same chemical compositions of Planet Mars , also should be qualify to live in the environment of a lower atmosphere pressure

    1. Note:
      In order to make experiments in the microgravity in the fields of biology we should understand the factors which having the influences upon the biology environment and to know how materials generally interact in a different phases ( Gas , Liquids and Solids ) therefore we have to determine these factors in a few points:

      – The capability of the chemical reactions among materials depends upon the difference of the Electronegativity of reacted material where fundamentally depends on the electron orbits order of these elements that could briefly analysed via the following formula :
      [1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 4s2 3d10 ,,,,etc.]

      – The value of the surfaces of the interact materials were have a directly proportion with the capability of these interacts, where powder of a solid material have biggest value of solid phase.

      Note: if there are two or more different phases of material interacted (Gas ,Liquids and Solids), we have to focus upon the value of a surface tension of liquids materials, because if the value of the surface tension in the high level that could results some difficulties to contact among interact materials , due to the characteristics of a liquid material which take a spiracle shape and draw it self of the another materials that could prevent any sort of reactions , (This happens obviously in the microgravity environment) .

      – The temperature of has also directly proportional for these reactions and the interact materials , due to increasing ratio of the atomic movements , also the effectively of electrons movements of among the atoms and molecules of these materials .

      – The dissolvability of solid materials among each other depends upon the ratio of similarities of the microstructure of these material , ( as long as these microstructure has more similarity the dissolvability among them will increase as well).

      [ We have to all way find a suitable technique to separate the resultant material of any chemical reactions toward out of the chemical reaction zone ( The Chemical Reactors) , in order to give the chance to these chemical reaction continue , otherwise it will prevent the contact among interacted materials and prevent continues of the required chemical operations] .

      The pharmaceutical industry and the biological researchers should work in the suitable temperature during materials interact , because often their materials are (a complex chemical material or even Semi-living material m or DNA or even live bacteria ,,,,, etc.).

      Therefore any extreme heating during their experiments operations , could distort the chemical components to another sort of chemical material, [ where no one would expect the results of the chemical reactions of a broken components] , or even may kill these bacteria .

      We could substitute the temperature factor in these reaction via mechanical vibrations in the reaction zone spatially if materials were solid powders.

      Also there is an ability to press a stable gas such Nitrogen gas (in a closed cycles ) to the chemical reactor to make powders in a turbulence case such a boiling liquids .

      The microgravity or the zero gravity could not represent any phase of energy, but it may gives the opportunity to appearthe the surface tension characteristics clearly that could prevent some of these interacts of phases (Gas, Liquids and Solids Materials interact ) due to reducing the value of contacted areas of these materials.

      The zero gravity could not represent as any energy phases as a stabile magnetic fields could not generate electricity on stable metallic wires , but we need to make a many experiments in the microgravity environment such the environment on the board of The International Space Station to know the effects of a gravity particles of the Earth gravity field at the altitude flights of The International Space Station at speed 28000 km/h upon life body .

  3. 1. I am just curious what that cost us (American Taxpayer) for a 1 hour segment of Q & A to ship 25lbs of Jerseys ?
    2. Can we see the other 30 Jerseys?
    3. the female appears to have on a smaller size than the male so 64 Jerseys?

    Thank you,

    1. Absolutely. As a taxpayer, I question NASA’s implicit endorsement of the profit-making NFL. This is enabling the rich to get even richer still.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *