Pioneering Space Station Breakthroughs: NASA's EXPRESS Rack Reaches 100,000-Hour Milestone

    HOUSTON, TX, November 19, 2014 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Getting more from less is no cliche aboard the International Space Station, it's necessity. With six people living, working and conducting science in the space of a single-family house 240 miles above Earth, square footage is at a premium. NASA's EXPRESS Rack helps ensure there's room for research on the orbiting laboratory.

EXPRESS is a multipurpose rack system housing and supporting research. On Oct. 4, EXPRESS Rack 1 marked 100,000 hours of operation. There are eight EXPRESS racks on the station, each filled with multiple studies.

"The versatility of EXPRESS is what makes it so valuable to NASA and scientists," said Tara Ruttley, associate program scientist for the space station at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Not only can it house experiments, but it also provides a customized environment for each, allowing proper working conditions for each investigation. It helps us learn more about living and working in space, which leads to new advances in science and medicine on Earth."

EXPRESS allows investigators to perform research across scientific disciplines by providing common structural interfaces, power, data, cooling, water and other items needed to conduct experiments in space. Since 2001, the racks have housed dozens of investigations leading to ground-breaking science discoveries, Earth benefits and technology innovations that are aiding future space travel.

"It's rewarding to see our EXPRESS Rack reach this milestone and continue to play an integral part of space station research," said Annette Sledd, space station office manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "The versatility of the racks to provide standard communication interfaces and utilities is key to their success and expanded use in support of station research, technology demonstrations and housing payload support equipment."

Payloads flown in EXPRESS Racks range from Protein Crystal Growth experiments to the Advanced Astroculture (ADVASC) investigation to refrigerators and incubators, to name just a few examples. One investigation in the racks includes 20 mice and is part of the Rodent Research investigation. The fourth SpaceX cargo resupply service mission delivered the first rodent studies to the station. Studies on the space shuttle indicated rodents make good research models for physiological changes similar to those experienced by humans. The investigation will provide information about changes occurring during spaceflight and could lead to discoveries in basic biology and offer insight into human aging and disease on Earth.

ADVASC demonstrated plants can complete seed-to-seed life cycles in microgravity and determined how microgravity affects genetic and chemical differences in soybean seeds produced in space compared with seeds harvested on Earth. Soybeans are consumed globally and potential crops for future deep space missions. Understanding their growth is critical for production on Earth and in space. The unique air scrubber within ADVASC's hardware, designed to keep plants healthy, has contributed to cancer-fighting pharmaceuticals, surgical tools and educational opportunities. Winemakers now use this bioconversion technology to remove potentially harmful, naturally-occurring organic compounds, including yeast spores and mold; improve end results; reduce labor for decontamination; and minimize evaporation loss.

Protein crystals grown in microgravity help scientists understand the atomic, three-dimensional structure of protein molecules used in pharmaceutical research for cancer treatments, stroke prevention and other diseases. One specific investigation looks at modified high-density protein crystals and how membrane proteins move signals or molecules to and from cells' interiors or help cells identify each other for immune responses.

On Earth, sedimentation and convection hinder protein crystallization because molecules in crystal solutions are not uniform in size or weight. Proteins in microgravity are exposed to conditions that allow them to form crystals more clearly and perfectly than ones grown on Earth. Knowing how protein crystals grow without gravity could be instrumental to designing new drugs.

Roughly the size of refrigerators, EXPRESS racks do more than keep milk cold. They help run multiple investigations in orbit 24 hours a day and, in the case of EXPRESS Rack 1, have done so for longer than most people keep their car.

By Bill Hubscher
International Space Station Program Science Office
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center

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