NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations Research Articles

Real-Time Culture-Independent Microbial Profiling Onboard the International Space Station Using Nanopore Sequencing

For the past two decades, microbial monitoring of the International Space Station (ISS) has relied on culture-dependent methods that require return to Earth for analysis. This has a number of limitations, with the most significant being bias towards the detection of culturable organisms and the inherent delay between sample collection and ground-based analysis. In recent years, portable and easy-to-use molecular-based tools, such as Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ MinION™ sequencer and miniPCR bio’s miniPCR™ thermal cycler, have been validated onboard the ISS. Here, we report on the development, validation, and implementation of a swab-to-sequencer method that provides a culture-independent solution to real-time microbial profiling onboard the ISS. Method development focused on analysis of swabs collected in a low-biomass environment with limited facility resources and stringent controls on allowed processes and reagents. ISS-optimized procedures included enzymatic DNA extraction from a swab tip, bead-based purifications, altered buffers, and the use of miniPCR and the MinION. Validation was conducted through extensive ground-based assessments comparing current standard culture-dependent and newly developed culture-independent methods. Similar microbial distributions were observed between the two methods; however, as expected, the culture-independent data revealed microbial profiles with greater diversity. Protocol optimization and verification was established during NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) analog missions 21 and 22, respectively. Unique microbial profiles obtained from analog testing validated the swab-to-sequencer method in an extreme environment. Finally, four independent swab-to-sequencer experiments were conducted onboard the ISS by two crewmembers. Microorganisms identified from ISS swabs were consistent with historical culture-based data, and primarily consisted of commonly observed human-associated microbes. This simplified method has been streamlined for high ease-of-use for a non-trained crew to complete in an extreme environment, thereby enabling environmental and human health diagnostics in real-time as future missions take us beyond low-Earth orbit.

Into the Extreme: US Environmental Systems and Politics beyond Earth by Valerie Olson

Reviewed by: Into the Extreme: US Environmental Systems and Politics beyond Earth by Valerie Olson Blair Bainbridge Valerie Olson, Into the Extreme: US Environmental Systems and Politics beyond Earth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. 280 pp. Since its launch in 2006, New Horizons’ journey through the solar system has been filled with historical firsts. After zooming past the outer planets in record time, this NASA space probe successfully captured the first ever up-close images of Pluto and its moons in 2015. Now, after a short slumber in the distant Kuiper Belt region of the solar system, it is back online, preparing to make history once more. In January 2019, New Horizons will fly by what a recent press release has called the “most primitive world ever observed by spacecraft” (Wall 2018). Originally called 2014 MU69, this Kuiper Belt object was the subject of a recent re-naming competition. The name settled on: Ultima Thule, (meaning, “beyond Thule”), a term used in medieval literature to refer to “the extreme limit of travel and discovery”1 and places “beyond the known world” (Wall 2018). The name was praised by New Horizons’ primary investigator, Alan Stern, who found its symbolism apposite beyond its spatial connotations. Not only would reaching this new world be an “ultimate” achievement for NASA’s space exploration program, Stern claimed; MU69 would also serve as “humanity’s next Ultima Thule” (Wall 2018). Stern’s comparison of New Horizons’ space exploration to the opening of new spatial and conceptual frontiers for humanity writ large is what anthropologist Valerie Olson would describe as a kind of “systems work” (6), and is the main subject of her new monograph, Into the Extreme. Olson defines systems work as a set of processes and techniques that “conceptually and physically formalize social, material, and spatial connections and separations, often in terms of a system–environment relationship” (6). Taking on systems as an ethnographic object rather than [End Page 1417] as an analytical tool, Olson seeks to understand how systems interlink disparate things into integrated wholes, and to what sociopolitical ends. The crux of this book lies in Olson’s argument that systems are “relational technologies” (5); in the most basic sense, its five themed chapters can be seen as ethnographic manifestations of this claim across multiple scales, sites, and objects of analysis. Moving across a wide range of speculative scientific projects, from haptic spacesuits to underwater human habitats, Olson puts forth NASA spaceflight programs as central loci of systems thinking and practice, that is, systems work, in the US from the postwar era to the present. In doing so, she reveals the integral contributions of outer space systems work to contemporary American technoscientific visions and aspirations for the future, shaped out of deep-seated settler colonial ideologies but irreducible to them. Into the Extreme investigates the unfolding of a pervasive contemporary relational imagination, an imagination which the discipline of anthropology has routinely embraced. As such, anthropologists of all stripes will want to pay attention to this book. Into the Extreme draws on Olson’s seven years of fieldwork (2005–2012) at four NASA centers, five medical centers in the US and Canada, as well as aerospace companies, conferences, and field testing sites. Olson follows projects that came about during NASA’s “Constellation” era, an initiative begun by George W. Bush in 2006 to go “back to the moon and Mars and ‘beyond’” (7), with a $230 billion USD budget to boot. These projects include NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations’ (NEEMO) Aquarius habitat, an underwater space analog research station off the coast of South Florida (Chapter 1); biomedical research on astronaut veterans, candidates, and hopefuls, whose ecologically integrated bodies come to exemplify the human as system (Chapter 2); speculative design projects for comfortable dwelling in the extreme, including sensitive, skintight space suits and transitional and transportable habitats (Chapters 3 and 4); and near-earth object (NEO) research and political activism, involving advocacy for new off-world mining opportunities as well as new transnational disaster-preparedness strategies (Chapter 5). Olson provides an important genealogy of the systems concept in the Introduction, which is a key part of what makes Into the Extreme a worthwhile...

NEEMO 15: Evaluation of human exploration systems for near-Earth asteroids

The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 15 mission was focused on evaluating techniques for exploring near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). It began with a University of Delaware autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) systematically mapping the coral reef for hundreds of meters surrounding the Aquarius habitat. This activity is akin to the type of “far-field survey” approach that may be used by a robotic precursor in advance of a human mission to a NEA. Data from the far-field survey were then examined by the NEEMO science team and follow-up exploration traverses were planned, which used Deepworker single-person submersibles. Science traverses at NEEMO 15 were planned according to a prioritized list of objectives developed by the science team. These objectives were based on review and discussion of previous related marine science research, including previous marine science saturation missions conducted at the Aquarius habitat. AUV data were used to select several areas of scientific interest. The Deepworker science traverses were then executed at these areas of interest during 4 days of the NEEMO 15 mission and provided higher resolution data such as coral species distribution and mortality. These traverses are analogous to the “near-field survey” approach that is expected to be performed by a Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV) during a human mission to a NEA before extravehicular activities (EVAs) are conducted. In addition to the science objectives that were pursued, the NEEMO 15 traverses provided an opportunity to test newly developed software and techniques. Sample collection and instrument deployment on the NEA surface by EVA crew would follow the “near-field survey” in a human NEA mission. Sample collection was not necessary for the purposes of the NEEMO science objectives; however, the engineering and operations objectives during NEEMO 15 were to evaluate different combinations of vehicles, crew members, tools, and equipment that could be used to perform these science objectives on a NEA. Specifically, the productivity and acceptability of simulated NEA exploration activities were systematically quantified and compared when operating with different combinations of crew sizes and exploration systems including MMSEVs, EVA jet packs, and EVA translation devices. Data from NEEMO 15 will be used in conjunction with data from software simulations, parametric analysis, other analog field tests, anchoring models, and integrated testing at Johnson Space Center to inform the evolving architectures and exploration systems being developed by the Human Spaceflight Architecture Team.

Multiplatform Ocean Exploration: Insights From the NEEMO Space Analog Mission

AbstractSince the beginning of space exploration, methods and protocols of exploration have been developed using space analogs on Earth to reduce research costs, develop safe deployment/retrieval protocols, and ready astronauts for hostile environments in less threatening settings. Space analogs are required as much as ever today as astronauts and scientists develop new tools and techniques for exploration, while working to address evolving mission objectives from low-earth orbit to deep-space exploration. This study examines coordinated human and robotic exploration at the Aquarius Underwater Habitat off of the coast of Key Largo, Florida, in support of the NEEMO 15 (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) program. The exploration scheme presented in this work fuses (1) robotic precursor missions as a means of remote sensing data collection; (2) crowdsourcing to process immense amounts of data to identify key targets of interest that might be missed in the tight cycle of mission operations; and (3) human exploration to examine locations directly up close and collect physical samples that require involved sampling techniques. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and single-person submersibles, called DeepWorkers™, were used as underwater analogs of robotic systems currently being used and human-operated vehicles (HOVs) proposed for use on a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA), the Moon, or Mars. In addition to operational lessons learned for space exploration that are directly applicable to ocean exploration, ocean floor mapping provides new levels of detail of benthic habitat critical for coral reef monitoring and management. Opportunistic (onsite adaptive) data sampling also took place by placing self-recording instrumentation onto each of the DeepWorkers, increasing the collection of scientific information during the submersible missions and contributing to mission planning for optimal and efficient use of expensive assets.

Reusable science tools for analog exploration missions: xGDS Web Tools, VERVE, and Gigapan Voyage

The Exploration Ground Data Systems (xGDS) project led by the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at NASA Ames Research Center creates software tools to support multiple NASA-led planetary analog field experiments. The two primary tools that fall under the xGDS umbrella are the xGDS Web Tools (xGDS-WT) and Visual Environment for Remote Virtual Exploration (VERVE). IRG has also developed a hardware and software system that is closely integrated with our xGDS tools and is used in multiple field experiments called Gigapan Voyage. xGDS-WT, VERVE, and Gigapan Voyage are examples of IRG projects that improve the ratio of science return versus development effort by creating generic and reusable tools that leverage existing technologies in both hardware and software.xGDS Web Tools provides software for gathering and organizing mission data for science and engineering operations, including tools for planning traverses, monitoring autonomous or piloted vehicles, visualization, documentation, analysis, and search. VERVE provides high performance three dimensional (3D) user interfaces used by scientists, robot operators, and mission planners to visualize robot data in real time. Gigapan Voyage is a gigapixel image capturing and processing tool that improves situational awareness and scientific exploration in human and robotic analog missions. All of these technologies emphasize software reuse and leverage open source and/or commercial-off-the-shelf tools to greatly improve the utility and reduce the development and operational cost of future similar technologies.Over the past several years these technologies have been used in many NASA-led robotic field campaigns including the Desert Research and Technology Studies (DRATS), the Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP), the K10 Robotic Follow-Up tests, and most recently we have become involved in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) field experiments. A major objective of these joint robot and crew experiments is to improve NASAs understanding of how to most effectively execute and increase science return from exploration missions. This paper focuses on an integrated suite of xGDS software and compatible hardware tools: xGDS Web Tools, VERVE, and Gigapan Voyage, how they are used, and the design decisions that were made to allow them to be easily developed, integrated, tested, and reused by multiple NASA field experiments and robotic platforms.

Saturation Diving Alters Folate Status and Biomarkers of DNA Damage and Repair

Exposure to oxygen-rich environments can lead to oxidative damage, increased body iron stores, and changes in status of some vitamins, including folate. Assessing the type of oxidative damage in these environments and determining its relationships with changes in folate status are important for defining nutrient requirements and designing countermeasures to mitigate these effects. Responses of humans to oxidative stressors were examined in participants undergoing a saturation dive in an environment with increased partial pressure of oxygen, a NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations mission. Six participants completed a 13-d saturation dive in a habitat 19 m below the ocean surface near Key Largo, FL. Fasting blood samples were collected before, twice during, and twice after the dive and analyzed for biochemical markers of iron status, oxidative damage, and vitamin status. Body iron stores and ferritin increased during the dive (P<0.001), with a concomitant decrease in RBC folate (P<0.001) and superoxide dismutase activity (P<0.001). Folate status was correlated with serum ferritin (Pearson r = −0.34, P<0.05). Peripheral blood mononuclear cell poly(ADP-ribose) increased during the dive and the increase was significant by the end of the dive (P<0.001); γ-H2AX did not change during the mission. Together, the data provide evidence that when body iron stores were elevated in a hyperoxic environment, a DNA damage repair response occurred in peripheral blood mononuclear cells, but double-stranded DNA damage did not. In addition, folate status decreases quickly in this environment, and this study provides evidence that folate requirements may be greater when body iron stores and DNA damage repair responses are elevated.

Oxidative Damage during a 10‐ to 12‐d Saturation Dive

The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) underwater habitat is a useful spaceflight analog. The increased air pressure in the habitat exposes crew members to higher oxygen pressures, which increase their risk for oxidative damage to DNA, proteins, and lipids. DNA oxidation occurs at an increased level, similar to that observed in smokers and astronauts returning from space. Astronauts in space and NEEMO crew members also have changes in iron metabolism. Newly formed red blood cells are destroyed and body iron stores are elevated. Excess iron can act as an oxidant and cause tissue damage. In this study we investigated aspects of oxidative damage and tested whether toxic forms of iron were present when iron stores increased during NEEMO missions. Subjects (n = 12) participated in 10‐ to 12‐d saturation dives, and blood and 24‐h urine samples were collected twice before, twice during, and twice after the dive. During the dive, ferritin was significantly (P &lt; 0.001) higher, transferrin tended to be lower (P = 0.053), and transferrin receptors were lower (P &lt; 0.001). Total homocysteine was significantly (P &lt; 0.001) elevated and superoxide dismutase activity was decreased (P &lt; 0.05). Labile plasma iron was measurable during the dive but not before or after it. These data indicate that the NEEMO environment increases iron stores, which may cause oxidative damage. This study was supported by the NASA Human Research Program.

Nutritional Status Changes in Humans during a 14-Day Saturation Dive: The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations V Project

Ground-based analogs of spaceflight are an important means of studying physiologic and nutritional changes associated with space travel, and the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations V (NEEMO) is such an analog. To determine whether saturation diving has nutrition-related effects similar to those of spaceflight, we conducted a clinical nutritional assessment of the NEEMO crew (4 men, 2 women) before, during, and after their 14-d saturation dive. Blood and urine samples were collected before, during, and after the dive. The foods consumed by the crew were typical of the spaceflight food system. A number of physiologic changes were observed, during and after the dive, that are also commonly observed during spaceflight. Hemoglobin and hematocrit were lower (P < 0.05) after the dive. Transferrin receptors were significantly lower immediately after the dive. Serum ferritin increased significantly during the dive. There was also evidence indicating that oxidative damage and stress increased during the dive. Glutathione peroxidase and superoxide dismutase decreased during and after the dive (P < 0.05). Decreased leptin during the dive (P < 0.05) may have been related to the increased stress. Subjects had decreased energy intake and weight loss during the dive, similar to what is observed during spaceflight. Together, these similarities to spaceflight provide a model to use in further defining the physiologic effects of spaceflight and investigating potential countermeasures.