22 Jan 2022
In space, far from the strong tug of Earth’s gravity, astronauts experience a number of changes that could affect their health. Understanding these effects of weightlessness, as well as how to treat them, will be vital to a successful future for humans in space.
Since the environment of space alters multiple, interacting biological systems – including bones, muscles, the heart, blood flow, and the immune system – sometimes it is better to study everything at once in the entire organism. This can be achieved by working with research model organisms, such as mice and other rodents. Given their genetic similarity to humans, studying mice allows scientists to gain insight into the workings of the human body. The rodents’ faster development and shorter life span reveal effects of microgravity on a shorter timescale, and the chance to fly dozens of small rodents on each mission yields much more data from which to draw scientific conclusions.
To help answer fundamental questions about human health – both for Earth and in space – NASA’s Ames Research Center, in California’s Silicon Valley, developed the Rodent Research Hardware System. Making use of its equipment and protocols, scientists are able to partner with NASA to conduct a variety of experiments in the unique laboratory of the International Space Station, without the need to develop and test a new system for each mission.
The Ames team built the new system based upon their decades-long experience of conducting rodent research aboard the space shuttle. Today’s system makes longer-term basic and applied research possible in space.
How Does It Work?
The three major components of the Rodent Research Hardware System are used for different stages of the mission. The animals make the trip to and from the space station in the transporter. Upon arrival, the animal access unit allows the astronaut crew to transfer them safely into the third module, the habitat unit, which provides long-term housing for the rodents.
The experiments that take place on the space station examine how microgravity affects the animals and provide information relevant to human spaceflight, through discoveries in basic biology and new knowledge that can help treat human diseases on Earth. Working together, NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, or CASIS, selected and prepared spaceflight experiments, led by principal investigators from institutions around the U.S., using the rodent research hardware system.
To maximize the knowledge gained from these missions, unused tissue samples from the experiments will be shared with additional researchers who will use them for even more studies. Data from the spaceflight investigation will also be made available to the public via NASA’s GeneLab data system. The GeneLab data system is a collaborative workspace and set of tools to analyze huge amounts of space biology data, which allows the opportunities for discovery to be multiplied many fold.
Rodent Research-1
This important first mission in NASA’s rodent research project launched in 2014. It proved that the hardware system was effective and safe to use in space, and that critical research operations could be carried out by the space station crew. This first study showed that mice transported on the SpaceX Dragon capsule, then living in the habitat on the space station for a month, were both healthy and active. Rodent Research-1 also included a CASIS commercial research investigation dedicated to the study of muscle loss, or atrophy.
[Image]
(A) The Rodent Research Hardware System includes three modules: (left) habitat, (center) transporter, and (right) animal access unit.
(B) NASA’s Rodent Habitat module with both access doors open.
(C) NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore setting up the Rodent Reseach-1 Hardware in the Microgravity Science Glovebox aboard the International Space Station.