Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration Life and Physical Sciences Research for a New Era (2011) / Chapter Skim
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Further, the scientific accomplishments required to meet this goal will bring a deeper understanding of the performance of people, ani mals, plants, microbes, materials, and engineered systems not only in the space environment but also on Earth, providing terrestrial benefits by advancing fundamental knowledge in these areas. During its more than 50-year history, NASA's success in human space exploration has depended on the agency's ability to effectively address a wide range of biomedical, engineering, physical science, and related obstacles -- an achievement made possible by NASA's strong and productive commitments to life and physical sciences research for human space exploration, and by its use of human space exploration infrastructures for scientific discovery.*
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This report examines the fundamental science and technology that underpin developments whose payoffs for human exploration programs will be substantial, as the following examples illustrate: • An effective countermeasures program to attenuate the adverse effects of the space environment on the health and performance capabilities of astronauts, a development that will make it possible to conduct prolonged human space exploration missions. • A deeper understanding of the mechanistic role of gravity in the regulation of biological systems (e.g., mechanisms by which microgravity triggers the loss of bone mass or cardiovascular function)
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Administrative Oversight of Life and Physical Sciences Research Currently, life and physical science endeavors have no clear institutional home at NASA. In the context of a programmatic home for an integrated research agenda, program leadership and execution are likely to be produc tive only if aggregated under a single management structure and housed in a NASA directorate or key organiza tion that understands both the value of science and its potential application in future exploration missions.
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The committee concluded that: • Regularly issued solicitations for NASA-sponsored life and physical sciences research are necessary to attract investigators to research that enables or is enabled by space exploration. Effective solicitations should include broad research announcements to encourage a wide array of highly innovative applications, targeted research announcements to ensure that high-priority mission-oriented goals are met, and team research announcements that specifically foster multidisciplinary translational research.
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These two interconnected concepts -- that science is enabled by access to space and that science enables future exploration missions -- testify to the powerful complementarity of science and the human spaceflight endeavor. For example, the research recommended in this report addresses unanswered questions related to the health and welfare of humans undertaking extended space missions, to tech nologies needed to support such missions, and to logistical issues with potential impacts on the health of space travelers, such as ensuring adequate nutrition, protection against exposure to radiation, suitable thermoregulation, appropriate immune function, and attention to stress and behavioral factors.
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The adaptation processes include responses that result in variations in astronauts' mental and physical health, and strongly stress and affect crew performance, productivity, and well-being. It is important to develop new methods, and to improve current methods, for mini mizing psychiatric and sociopsychological costs inherent in spaceflight missions, and to better understand issues related to the selection, training, and in-flight and post-flight support of astronaut crews.
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This research will enable new exploration capabilities and yield new insights into a broad range of physical phenomena in space and on Earth, particularly with regard to improved power generation, propulsion, life support, and safety. Applied physical sciences research topics of particular interest are as follows: • Reduced-gravity multiphase flows, cryogenics, and heat transfer database development and modeling; • Interfacial flows and phenomena in exploration systems; • Dynamic granular material behavior and subsurface geotechnics; • Strategies and methods for dust mitigation; • Complex fluid physics in a reduced-gravity environment; • Fire safety research to improve screening of materials in terms of flammability and fire suppression; • Combustion processes and modeling; • Materials synthesis and processing to control microstructures and properties; • Advanced materials design and development for exploration; and • Research on processes for in situ resource utilization.
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For each of the high-priority research areas identified above, the committee classified the research recommen dations as enabling for future space exploration options, enabled by the environment of space that exploration missions will encounter, or both. Research Portfolio Implementation While the committee believes that any healthy, integrated program of life and physical sciences research will give consideration to the full set of recommended research areas discussed in this report -- and will certainly incorporate the recommendations identified as having the highest priority by the committee and its panels -- it fully recognizes that further prioritization and decisions on the relative timing of research support in various areas will be determined by future policy decisions.
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Thus, the recommended life sciences research portfolio centers on an integrated scientific pursuit to reduce the health hazards facing space explorers, while also advancing fundamental scientific discoveries. Similarly, revolutionary † See, for example, National Research Council, Review of NASA Plans for the International Space Station , The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 2006.
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space exploration and scientific discovery.
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