DAISY: Oh hey... you caught me. I'm a bit of a germophobe.
I hate dirty surface areas...
But do you want to know who else is that way...
...the astronauts on the International Space Station.
And thanks to some new technology, they are going to
have the cleanest station in the whole galaxy.
It's the latest tech news... from space, next on Real World
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DAISY: NASA has a new technology that is getting
attention from the highest ranks...
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Any of the young people have another
question? YOUNG PERSON: Have you found
any life forms or any plants out in space.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: That's a good question. Any, uh... Any life
forms out there, other than you guys?
SANDRA MAGNAS: We actually did an experiment on this mission
to take a swab or a sample of the surface of the EVA,
the space walker's glove, both before and after the
space walk. And that's a...
that was a sort of demonstration of the types of
technology we'll be able to use on the moon and Mars for the
same purpose to try and see if we can determine what sort of
bacteria or microorganisms are living in the various
environments we're going to encounter. We unfortunately,
haven't really found anything here. I think we'll have much
more success at finding new types of life and different
structures when we go to places like moon and Mars and moons of
Titans and other types of environments.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Excellent question.
DAISY: The program they're referring to is called LOCAD.
LOCAD is Lab on a Chip Application Development.
The technology employs a small amount of fluids and involves
behavior, precise control and manipulation
of those fluids on a very small scale.
LISA MONACO: This is actually a microfluidic chip.
It's um... It's made out of glass.
DAISY: Dr. Lisa Monaco is LOCAD scientist at Marshall Space
Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama.
LISA: And the way they make these is by using all the same
technologies they use to make integrated circuits.
DAISY: Like computer chips, except instead of information
traveling along the circuit, it's little bits of fluid.
LISA: And if you look real closely, up to the light,
you see all the tiny little channels in there and those are
the channels where we have chemical reactions going
on and can do analyses.
DAISY: This technology is perfect for the International
Space Station, where astronauts have to constantly monitor
their environment to make sure it stays clean
and free of harmful bacteria.
LISA: Your sample size is very small. And what's really good,
especially when you're on the space station, is all your
solutions are contained. So you've already got everything
that you need to do the experiment, right on the chip.
DAISY: And that's huge, because pre-chip technology involves
taking a sample, and then analyzing it,
using a variety of chemicals.
In a case like this, you'd have to take the sample to a lab for
analysis. You might not know results for weeks.
This is an issue, because bacteria multiply
exponentially. One germ turns into two, two into four,
four into eight, and so on...
and this can happen pretty quickly.
In the right environment, bacteria multiply once every
20 minutes. That means one turns into eight in an hour...
more than 16 million in 8 hours.
Exponential multiplication can be calculated by multiplying
the initial amount, A by 1 plus the growth rate, in this case,
1 to the power of x, which is the number of intervals.
So in our example, 1 times 1 plus 1, to the 24th power,
which is how many intervals the bacteria would double itself
by, over 8 hours. So 2 to the 24th power, or
16,777,216.
So obviously it's vital to address issues quickly on the
space station, which is why the LOCAD system is built
for speed and convenience.
LISA: This is called the swabbing tool, and the
astronaut on board would just take the packet, like a bubble
packet, and pull out all the items they would need,
easy to assemble. And the astronaut only needs to go over
and go to the area of interest, the crew member, and do a swab,
and then place this cartridge, which has the reagents needed
for the chemical reaction into the unit, and you just simply
dispense your volume right into the reservoir well. And then
you press enter and within 15 minutes, you get a reading.
DAISY: This is being used on the station currently, for
technology demonstration. Which basically means they are
testing it out, to make sure it works up there.
LISA: We've done it many times. We've had many crew members
sample, at their desire, all over the space station.
DAISY: And the results...
LISA: The ISS is kept very clean. So they have routine
cleaning procedures. And when it's a material or surface
that's easily wiped, we've found that it's typically
clean. There have been a couple surprises.
Some areas that might have padded fabric, that doesn't
get a routine wipe, that show bacterial signatures.
DAISY: Speaking of bacterial signatures, my lab results
are in... this doesn't look good.
This technology could have dramatic uses in places other
than space, too, like in medicine, where your doctor
could test your blood and get results almost immediately.
But for now, scientists and engineers continue to develop
the technology to make it a useful component on
the space station.
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