“Long-distance crew reconnaissance missions require about 98% water recovery, and there is currently no modern technology in brine processing that can help achieve this goal,” NASA officials wrote in a news release. “This brine processor system plans to reduce this gap for the space station’s urine waste.”
The Cygnus mission also has a new place to sleep for the space station crew. There are currently five crew members on the U.S. space station segment, with four astronauts flying to outer space on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule in November, and astronaut Kate Rubins, who arrived on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in October.
But the US segment has only four places to sleep. Astronaut Mike Hopkins, commander of the Crew Dragon mission, slept in the SpaceX capsule moored to the space station.
Other equipment in the Cygnus supply ship includes spare parts and support equipment for the space station’s toilets, and air tanks to recharge the breathing atmosphere in the space laboratory.
One of the research experiments on the NG-15 mission will investigate how microgravity is the production of artificial retinas based on protein. Led by a startup company called LambdaVision in Connecticut, the experiment is a follow-up to an investigation that flew to the space station in 2018 that yielded “very encouraging” results, according to Nicole Wagner, president and CEO of LambdaVision.
The company uses a “layer-by-layer” process to manufacture artificial retinas, which can be implanted in patients suffering from retinal degenerative diseases.
“This is the second of what we expect will be many, many flights (to the space station),” said Jordan Greco, chief scientific officer of LambdaVision. “This particular layer test allows us to continue to gather critical information about the design of the system and to investigate the influence of microgravity on this layer process.”
‘The work we send to NG-15 is that we send the protein material, and that we are going to manufacture the artificial retina on the ISS. We are therefore doing this layer-by-layer process on board the International Space Station, and then the films will then be returned to earth for analysis, ”Wagner said.
With funding support from NASA, LambdaVision is looking at extending the layer-by-layer manufacturing process to applications other than artificial retinas, Wagner said.
The retinal implants developed by LambdaVision can restore “high-resolution vision” for patients by replacing the function of light-sensing rods and cones in the eye, according to Wagner. The artificial retinas consist of a light-activated protein.
“We are just delighted that we can have a chance to establish a base for manufacturing products in a low-Earth orbit with real clinical benefits for patients, and in our case for patients blinded by these devastating retinals. degenerative disease, “Greco said.
Credits: Lambda Vision
Another experiment on the NG-15 mission will measure muscle strength in several generations of worms, including animals raised in space. Humans lose power during space missions, but scientists want to better understand the biological changes caused by gravity.
“To understand the biology, our project aims to take these … worms and see how the potency of these worms changes,” said Siva Vanapalli, a professor of chemical engineering at Texas Tech University, and lead researcher said of the experiment.
The experiment was launched with 1,000 worm larvae that will grow during the mission. The worms will produce several times in space, according to Vanapalli.
A new device called NemaFlex will continuously measure the worms’ muscle strength. “If we observe that our device is capable of recording these strength changes, it offers tremendous opportunities to perform experiments on different agents and figure out how to maintain and improve the health of astronauts,” Vanapalli said.
The Cygnus transported a high-performance commercial computer from the shelf of Hewlett Packard Enterprise to the space station. Engineers will test the computer’s ability to process scientific data in space, which NASA said could potentially yield faster results from their experiments.
The cargo mission also carries a radiation detector that will fly on NASA’s Orion spacecraft. A successful test of the radiation monitor on the space station will force the unit to fly on the first Orion mission, Artemis 2, to the moon in 2023, NASA said.
Several small nanosatellites are being stored aboard the Cygnus cargo ship to be released in the coming months.
The Gunsmoke-J technology demonstration satellite is a 3U CubeSat for the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, which aims to prove the usefulness of a terrestrial payload for tactical use by military combat troops.
“This scientific and technological endeavor offers new and advanced capabilities to the tactical warriors in a small satellite about the size of a loaf of bread,” the military said in a press release last year. “The effort will also help make future procurement decisions.”
The Gunsmoke J satellite and two other small satellites for unspecified US government customers were launched within the Cygnus spacecraft’s pressure module. Before the spacecraft leaves the International Space Station later this year, astronauts will place the satellites on the railway deployment at the Cygnus hatch for separation after the cargo has left the complex.
Spaceflight, the Seattle-based brokerage for the launch of rideshare, has arranged launch services for the Gunsmoke-J and the two other U.S. government satellites.
Several other CubeSats are also on board the Cygnus cargo ship. The one is called IT SPINS, and it will collect images of the ionosphere over the night side of the earth during a six-month research mission. The IT SPINS CubeSat, about the size of a toaster, was developed at Montana State University.
A CubeSat called DhabiSat was developed by students at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi. Students developed the CubeSat with the help of Yahsat, a communications satellite company in Abu Dhabi, and Northrop Grumman.
Paraguay’s first satellite, a CubeSat known as GuaraniSat 1, was also launched on Saturday. Paraguay’s space agency says the CubeSat was developed in partnership with engineers in Japan and universities and research centers in Paraguay.