The ultimate goal of our RRM3 is to be
able to further enable NASA's
exploration programs, so that we can help
satellites to live longer go farther and
be able to facilitate the human
exploration of space. RRM3 is the 3rd,
obviously, of three payloads that have
been developed by the satellite
servicing projects division at NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center.
So RRM3 is designed to be the
culmination of that effort where we're
going to take everything that we learned
from RRM1 and RRM2, and do an
end-to-end cryogenic transfer. The whole
goal of RRM3 is to help further
exploration and help be able to get NASA
to Mars and beyond. The goal of GEDI is
really fairly simple, it's to use laser
beams to measure how tall trees are
globally. And Bryan and I have been
trying for over 20 years to get this
technology into space. One of the big
questions we have right now is, what is
this balance between deforestation
that's pumping Co2 into the atmosphere,
and then subsequent regrowth by these
young rapidly regrowing trees that pull
the carbon out of the atmosphere. As
Ralph mentioned, GEDI is a laser
altimeter which is an active optical
sensor technology for, normally for
measuring surface topography, but GEDI
takes it a little bit further by
capturing that entire waveform structure.
The shape of that reflected pulse that
represents the height of the canopy and
the internal structure as Ralph
mentioned. And this information is useful
not just for carbon, for carbon modeling,
but also for biodiversity and habitat
quality. Because as you have more
vertical diversity in forests, you create
more niches for species. And so by having
this information, we'll be able to attack
a lot of problems. So this project is our
first project launching to the space
station, and it's developing a
drug-eluting wound dressing to help
treat patients, whether they're civilians
or combat injured soldiers, and reduce
the overall cost burden of the effects
of sepsis. And so we are conducting two
separate experiments aboard station. One
is to look at the
gel structure and how the gel
structure changes, whether it's formed on
Earth or on station. We're also looking
at how the drug release profile of these
materials changes on Earth or on station.
The purpose of loading up the gels for a
wound dressing is to directly release it
to the wound site, so you can increase
the concentration of the drug that's
being released to that wound site, and
reduce the systemic effects of that drug
overall. We are developing a protein-based retinal implant to restore vision
to the millions of patients that are
blinded by macular degeneration and
retinitis pigmentosa,
so age-related macular degeneration. It
affects about 30 million people
worldwide. This disease works by
affecting the central part of your
vision first, and then over time that'll
start to expand until a patient is
completely blind. So LambdaVision has
developed a small flexible protein-based
retinal implant. And so our implant can
be in place - is placed in the back of the
eye through a procedure that is very
similar to a retinal detachment
procedure. Within the cube lab that's
shown here is a manufacturing apparatus
that sort of mimics our layer by layer
process, but in a very different way than
how we implement it on on Earth. So
ideally we're going to be exploiting the
effects of microgravity and this would
help us lead to more homogeneous films,
more uniform layers. And that's the
ultimate goal, right, is to accelerate our
path to market, and help these patients
that are blind to fight these retinal
degenerative diseases.
Hi, my name is Adia Bulawa and I'm the Team
Rocket finalists. I decided to go with
testing UV-activated dental glue and see
how that would react in microgravity, and
that would be helpful for space trips,
because they've done it before, and the
piece that they used actually fell out the
next day. And here's an actual diagram of
the apparatus, and what's going to happen
is they actually have real teeth that
they're putting on the bottom of it. And
they're going to kind of recently -
filling a cavity and using the UV dental
glue, and see if it will stick better
than the normal dental paste. I'm Sarina
Kopf, I'm a first-year at Grinnell
College and I represent the group side
of the challenge. So my project is
looking into aeroponics. Aeroponics is
the process of replacing traditional
irrigation systems with mist, in order to
grow plants on Earth. This system uses
98% less water
60% less fertilizer, and no pesticides.
But despite this efficacy on Earth, no
one's ever tried to grow plants in space
before like this. So from this experiment
we're going to collect data obviously,
and this will be in the form of
photographic data and readings on
temperature humidity and carbon dioxide.
We're going to analyze that data with an
eye for the future because this possibly
could have an impact on the future of
agriculture in microgravity.
