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CU-Boulder in Space
NASA's space shuttle Atlantis took off on its final flight May 14 carrying three University of Colorado at Boulder-built biomedical payload devices, including one to help scientists understand how and why slimy and troublesome clumps of microorganisms flourish in the low-gravity conditions of space.
CU-Boulder aerospace engineering sciences graduate student Christine Fanchiang shown with BioServe Space Technologies hardware. (Photo by Patrick Campbell/Unversity of Colorado)
The experiments on biofilms -- clusters of microorganisms that adhere to each other or to various surfaces -- are of high interest to space scientists because of their potential impacts on astronaut and spacecraft health, said CU-Boulder's Louis Stodieck, director of BioServe Space Technologies in the aerospace engineering sciences department.
A second experiment using Bioserve hardware will analyze changes in virulence of two particularly nasty strains of bacteria in the low gravity of space. One, Salmonella, can cause illness and death to humans by tainting food and water. The second, Staphylococcus, can cause a variety of infections because of its ability to resist antibiotics in the penicillin class of drugs.
A third experiment will use Bioserve hardware to study cell cultivation in a tropical plant known as Jatropha that produces energy-rich nuts, a popular new renewable crop for biofuels.
NASA's space shuttle program has two scheduled flights remaining -- Discovery in September and Endeavour in November -- before the fleet is retired. Hardware and experiments built by BioServe are manifested on both missions as well as on future resupply vehicles traveling to the International Space Station from other countries.
BioServe also has flown several K-12 educational experiments on the International Space Station, including seed-germination studies, crystal garden growth experiments and life cycles of butterflies, providing learning opportunities for thousands of middle school and high school students around the world.
Both undergraduate and graduate students play a role in designing, building and testing spaceflight payloads from BioServe, a nonprofit, NASA-funded center. BioServe has flown payloads on 35 space shuttle missions.
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Jim Scott
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