Flight Programs 



— In addition, such research can identify, quantify, and develop 

 countermeasures to radiation hazards likely to confront humans during 

 extended-duration missions. 



• Timely phasing of research and technology (R&T) activities in the life 

 sciences is an absolute requirement. 



— Such activities must begin immediately, since the results of R&T will 

 have long-reaching effects. 



— Appropriate ground-based facilities are required to support life sciences 

 R&T. 



— A long-duration, free-flying bioplatform capability is needed to conduct 

 life sciences research for periods longer than 20 days. 



• The Space Station should be furnished with research facilities and instru- 

 ments to support experiments leading to stay times of up to 2 years as an 

 analog for human missions to Mars. A dedicated laboratory for life sciences 

 research must be provided. It should be designed to allow evaluation of 

 potential Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS) designs and 

 simulation of the isolation a crew might experience on long-duration 

 missions. In addition, it should have the capability of isolation in case of 

 environmental contamination. 



• The Space Station and Spacelab should both be furnished with a variable- 

 gravity facility that includes a 1.8-meter centrifuge rated for performing small 

 animal and plant investigations. The use of larger diameter centrifuge 

 facilities for human studies should be thoroughly studied. 



• Devices designed to measure and record remotely all aspects of ambient 

 radiation environments, specifically galactic radiation, should be placed on 

 all high-orbit and interplanetary spacecraft. This will require additional 

 resources for the development of better instrumentation, including real-time 

 telemetry and data acquisition. 



Instrumentation and Computational Capabilities 



Taking an experiment from the concept stage to flight is a complicated and time- 

 consuming process. The rules governing experimental hardware design have 

 always been dictated by the unique restrictions imposed by spacecraft design and 

 operations. The challenges of the design and development process, coupled with a 

 limited number of flight opportunities, cause NASA to place a premium on 

 deriving the most scientific value out of every experiment. Historically, NASA has 

 flown each experiment once, with no guarantee of reflight or of follow-on 

 experiments. To ensure that flight equipment would return meaningful data with a 

 high level of confidence, the Agency has often limited the scope of an experiment 

 to what can reasonably be performed in space. The process has often been 

 success driven, the logic being that if NASA could only provide one opportunity 

 for an experiment, the investigator(s) could only ask a question that the 

 experimental hardware had a good chance of answering. As a result, hardware 

 has often been custom tailored to perform one well-defined experiment on one 



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