Suggested Searches

David J. Smith: NASA in Silicon Valley Podcast

Season 1Aug 17, 2016

A conversation with David J. Smith, NASA Research Scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.

NASA in Silicon Valley Podcast


nasa_in_silicon_valley_david_j_smith.mp3

A conversation with David J. Smith, NASA Research Scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.

Transcript

Matthew C. Buffington (Host): You’re listening to NASA in Silicon Valley, a conversational podcast series from NASA’s Ames Research Center to chat with the various scientists, researchers, engineers, and all-around cool people at NASA.

As a quick reminder, we will have a new conversation with a NASA expert posted every Wednesday. As you might have noticed, we are also posting a few podcasts here and there of feature stories from NASA.gov. I’m literally just reading the stories out loud for folks that might be listening to the podcast but haven’t actually been to NASA.gov to read the stories for themselves. As always, if you have feedback feel free to reach out to us on Facebook or Twitter @NASAAmes and use the #NASASiliconValley.

Today’s guest is David J. Smith, scientist in the biosciences research branch at NASA Ames. We discuss NASA’s extensive work on space biology, and how the experiments on the International Space Station help prepare us for the journey to Mars. We discuss the difference between space biology and astrobiology, and how science is trying to answer some of the deepest human existential questions. Here is Dave Smith.

[Music]

Host: What brought you to Silicon Valley, what brought you to the Bay Area, how’d you get to Ames?

David J. Smith: West Coast is the best coast, although I grew up in Colorado, and then I actually worked at…

Host: Close enough, you can drive.

David J. Smith: I worked at Kennedy Space Center for seven years, and then made the jump over here to Ames about a year and a half ago.

Host: Really? How’d you end up over at Kennedy?

David J. Smith: I wanted to see rockets launched. I mean, it’s what inspired me to come work for NASA in the first place.

Host: Was it a thing like straight out of school, did you actually study? I mean, especially in space biology, were you an astrophysicist or a biologist who’s really into — like, how does that mix in?

David J. Smith: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know, I fell in love with biology at a pretty early age, and was always fascinated by astronomy. And when I was growing up, there were a lot of books being published in an emerging field called astrobiology, and the field’s tackling really ambitious questions — where do we come from, are we alone, how do we find life, where would we look? And the more I thought about that, I realized we were going to have instruments and spacecraft and hopefully humans someday exploring the surface of other worlds or looking at distant worlds for signs of life. In order to do that, we really need to understand biology here.

So, I went and got myself trained in biology, but I always kept my eye on astronomy and earth science.

Host: Did you do that in Colorado, or were you…

David J. Smith: No, I went to Princeton for college, and then after that I did my Ph.D. at the University of Washington, which has a fantastic program in astrobiology for graduate students.

Host: It’s a big difference than heading over to the heat of Cape Canaveral.

David J. Smith: This is true. I spent a lot of time in the air conditioning, indoors, while I was living in Florida.

Host: It’s perpetual times of indoors — indoors air conditioning to your air conditioned car to your air conditioned apartment.

David J. Smith: Hey, it’s a good excuse to stay in the laboratory and stay on task and get a lot of work done.

Host: Excellent. So, was that straight out of school, straight to Kennedy?

David J. Smith: Yeah, I was really lucky. I landed in NASA’s Pathway program, which allowed me to actually pursue my Ph.D. at the University of Washington, and then — it allowed me to pursue my Ph.D. at the University of Washington, and also put in about three months per year at Cape Canaveral, working at Kennedy Space Center.

Host: The cell phone alert is like, the work of an astrobiologist never ceases.

David J. Smith: Yeah. Let me go ahead and put that on mute.

Host: Hey, it’s all good. So, that’s cool. You were at Kennedy for seven years.

David J. Smith: Off and on, while pursuing my graduate degree, and then after I finished my Ph.D. I moved out there, worked for two years fulltime before coming over to Ames to join the space biosciences division.

Host: Okay, did they have a space bioscience thing at Kennedy?

David J. Smith: That’s an interesting question. So, Kennedy actually has a lot of life science infrastructure on-center, and the reason for that is, biological payloads need to get prepared and packaged before launch, and so you need to have that right there onsite before you put something in the rocket. And then when the samples return, it’s also nice to have the facilities and laboratories there to analyze the samples right away.

Host: Figure you’re going to have a bad day if the thing goes up in the rocket and the rattling, and your experiments fall apart.

David J. Smith: The challenging thing about doing biological experiments in space, whether you’re doing it on what we used to fly, the Space Shuttle, or doing it today on the International Space Station, is you need to usually load samples as late as you can. They’re biological, they’re alive, and there are only certain types of life that can be okay with being packaged and sitting on the shelf for six months. A lot of microorganisms can withstand that if you dry them out, but other types of life, not so much.

And so, you want to have the opportunity to put them inside the hardware and put them on the rocket as late as possible. And having laboratories onsite at Kennedy Space Center really helps you do that.

Host: And then, did the Pathways — I know with the Pathways program, were you able to jump around to different centers, or was it primarily school and Kennedy?

David J. Smith: I did get to drive across the country 13 times between Seattle and Cape Canaveral for each tour of duty, which was probably the highlight of my 20s.

Host: Seattle to Cape Canaveral, that is a diagonal, literally the longest drive.

David J. Smith: Hey, going to Mars is going to be longer someday for a lucky crew, but it was great. Always stopped along the way and saw new national parks. Thankfully since I grew up in Colorado, it was a convenient pit stop right in the middle.

Host: So, it was just a job you applied for, just came on over, found an opening, or how did it all work?

David J. Smith: I wanted to gain more space flight experience, and I wanted to work with biologists from all across the country who are flying stuff to the Space Station. And that’s what we do in the space biosciences division, we help make that happen. I’m lucky to have a job where I get to work with lots of smart people at universities and in industry, and help them fly biology to space. It’s an awesome job description.

Host: It’s a cool experience. I went to the SpaceX 8 launch.

David J. Smith: That was the night launch, wasn’t it?

Host: This was a day one, I think the more, it was the one where they first landed…

David J. Smith: 9 that just went was a night launch.

Host: Yes. But, talking to one of the staff, one of the people working there, it was the first time for me to see a rocket launch, and I’m just in awe, this is amazing. But it was a cool response, where people were like, yeah, but you guys do all the science over at Ames that goes up. This is why we do this, for that. It was a cool callback to Ames. We’re coming around this research center of creating the things that will eventually go up into the Space Station.

David J. Smith: It takes a ton of work and effort to finally get something packaged and installed inside that spacecraft before it launches, so you’re right, it’s extremely satisfying and definitely emotional when you finally see it take off.

Host: Excellent. So, talk a little bit more about where you’re working now, in the biosciences division. So, what are some of the cool stuff that you guys are working on?

David J. Smith: Yeah, my focal area is in microbiology, and this year has been a banner year for molecular biology on the Space Station. We have new instrumentation up there, and we even have a molecular biologist, Kate Rubins, who’s flying right now. And we are absolutely doing the kinds of things you would be doing on the ground in a sophisticated molecular biology lab finally on the Space Station. So it’s a game-changer, and we can do all kinds of neat analysis we couldn’t do before. And all of that’s happened this year.

Host: And so, what kind of payloads, or what does your day-to-day look like now? Or even I’m guessing, there’s variations of different types of science projects going on. Is there a big range of different projects, or is everybody all hands on deck for one thing?

David J. Smith: No, so the NASA Space Biology Program that I support funds investigators mostly at universities across the country to fly experiments to space, and to make that happen you have to do a lot of ground studies. And eventually you get packaged into hardware and flown to the Space Station, but not everybody does it at the same time. So, I’ve got teams I support that are all across that timeframe and timeline. And we’ve got folks that flew on SpaceX 8, the one that you saw. We had a couple investigators that were flying interesting experiments that were both related to microbiology.

There was an experiment called Micro-10 led by a principal investigator from the University of Southern California — his name’s Dr. Clay Wang. And what they were flying is a type of fungus that produces a type of compound called secondary metabolite.

Host: Secondary metabolite?

David J. Smith: Yes. So, that may not mean a lot to you, but different types of fungi on this planet, they respond to stress by forming these compounds, and some of those compounds have actual pharmaceutical applications. We can use them to make us healthy. And that’s an interesting thing. Penicillin is an example of that.

So, the reason they were flying this fungus to the Space Station was to see if any new hidden pathways emerged to the unique stress of microgravity and higher radiation. There may be new compounds we couldn’t produce here on the ground that we could produce in space. So, that was really what they were trying to poke and prod at.

Host: I guess it makes sense, when organisms have evolved over millions of years with gravity on them.

David J. Smith: On earth, with gravity.

Host: Then you put them in a place where there’s little to no…

David J. Smith: We may see a different response, and that response could benefit life on earth, if we could figure out what those compounds are and if they can potentially keep us healthier.

Host: As that applies to microorganisms, eventually applying stuff to humans in a long-term journey to Mars, as you were talking about, a long trip. It behooves us to understand how the body’s going to react to spending that much time in space.

David J. Smith: Exactly right.

Host: Now, touch a little on the differences of space biology versus astrobiology, because I know there’s a difference.

David J. Smith: Indeed. The way I think about it is simply this — with space biology, we intentionally take terrestrial biology into space to see how it responds. And that runs across the spectrum from microorganisms all the way up to rodents and even humans. And of course, NASA has a human research program as well too that studies the safety and health of the crew. Whereas astrobiology is kind of understanding and asking, are we alone, what is the extent if any and distribution of life in the universe, where do we come from, how did earth life evolve to be the way it is, and of course how can you detect it? What do you even do to look for it? Where do you look, and how do you look? Those are the kinds of things astrobiology examines.

Host: It figures if you’re looking for life on other planets, or even within our own solar system, it behooves you to understand what’s going on here with our own, so you know what to look for. Are you guys in sync with a lot of those other programs that are out looking for other, whether it’s the Kepler program or other different programs?

David J. Smith: Well, space biology is definitely on a different track, but it’s all related to the fundamental NASA mission. Ultimately, we want to be able to send humans to the surfaces of other worlds, including Mars. That means terrestrial biology, us and the things we carry in the spacecraft are going to another world. That is space biology. We need to understand how the cells are going to respond to a long-term mission beyond the earth orbit. That is space biology.

And on the surface of Mars, guess what, the crew’s going to be doing astrobiological investigations as well, too, and kinds of things a crew or spacecraft that’s robotic, like the ones we’ve been sending recently, have been setting the stage for examining Martian regolith and rocks and looking for water and ultimately looking for if there are nutrients there for extant or even extinct life. There’s the possibility that there’s still life on Mars, and we want to be able to look for it.

We also want to be able to analyze the rocks to see if there are any signatures of life that used to be on the planet but no longer is thriving.

Host: What’s looking hopeful in our own solar system, in our own backyard?

David J. Smith: People are really excited about Mars, of course, especially after the discovery of pockets of liquid water, and I know you talked to Mary-Beth about that. People are excited about the Europan Ocean, underneath all the ice. Of course NASA’s got a spacecraft that’s going to be going there in the years ahead. Those are really exciting targets.

And other astrobiologists spend time thinking about whether we can analyze the plumes that are ejected from Enceladus, one of the Saturn moons.

Host: Yeah, I remember hearing a thing about sending a probe going around.

David J. Smith: Some people even think we should take a look at Titan. Titan has a lot of organic molecules that may be some kind of life that thrives in cold could figure out a way of using. People in my field have even discussed, there’s a sweet spot in the upper atmosphere of Venus. Venus has got a very thick atmosphere, and way above the surface, way up above the surface, there may be a possibility of life that stays afloat and grabs some molecules it can use if there’s enough water there and if it’s protected from UV.

Listen, we don’t really eliminate many targets in the solar system, because we have one example of life as we know it here on this planet, and we definitely have to open ourselves up to the possibility of weird life, life that we wouldn’t recognize, but we have to be diligent and thoughtful about how we search for it.

Host: Are you guys able, do you guys do a lot of work — I’m just thinking of Antarctica or deep ocean, because that’s been one of those things as you hear about life existing on this planet in places we never thought it would, and that’s promising.

David J. Smith: Yeah, we’re continuously surprised, aren’t we? That’s why NASA’s been following the water, so to speak, on Mars. A lot of the robotic spacecraft have been trying to characterize the aquatic history of that planet for that reason, because here on earth, wherever you find water, you tend to find life.

Host: Looking between, looking at Ames and being in Silicon Valley, are there other centers that are also — I’m guessing there have to be a lot of institutes that are all looking at this. This is a big question, so I’d imagine you guys are all in sync and talking about your different findings.

David J. Smith: That’s the beauty of working for NASA. We’ve got field centers and scientists and astrobiology programs and space biology investigators, they’re scattered all across this country, and we work with people at universities and industry, like I said, trying to develop new technologies and share our results and think about how we do what we do in a way that we’re going to be able to make some revolutionary discoveries, quite frankly, in the century ahead.

Host: What seems to you to be the most promising, or what gets you excited, whether it’s a location or field?

David J. Smith: People are always asking, should we send robots to other worlds to explore, or should we send humans? And as far as I’m concerned, we need to do all of the above. And so, I’m excited about what robotics-based traffic can teach us, in order for us to, once we get there with a crew of scientists and engineers and doctors and whoever else we send, once we get there, how do we best use our time on the surface of that world?

And we are going to make some amazing discoveries on Mars. They’re just waiting for us. We’ve got to get there, and it’s going to take time, and we’re going to have to build a lot of new technologies and test a lot of things along the way, but we’ll get there. And I think when we take a look at what Mars has to teach us, we’re going to find some things out about ourselves here on this planet. That’s why I come to work every day, because I think those kinds of questions we’re going to tackle at Mars are going to inspire not only the next generation of scientists here, but are fundamentally going to improve the human experience. And the reason I say that is because we’re curious creatures. We want to know where we came from, and if we can get to the point where we better understand the universe which ultimately created us, that’s a really powerful thing to understand, and it makes me really excited.

Host: You came up as a biologist. Does that tend to be the typical career path?

David J. Smith: We’ve got a pretty diverse team, with a lot of people that are adaptable. I think if you’re interested in working for NASA, being a generalist and having a set of skills that you can put into any project, be it in life science or engineering or coding, you’ll find a way to fit in here. And so in my experience, yes, having a foundation of biological training has been super useful, but I’ve worked with investigators and teams that send stuff to the Space Station that includes organisms I’ve never worked with before. But there are a lot of fundamental principles you learn through biological education that you can apply to what we do here at NASA when we send space biology experiments to space.

Host: Does space biology primarily focus in lockstep with the ISS in sending stuff up there, or is there other work that isn’t necessarily destined for the Space Station but is still critical and stuff that you need to, that you guys are working on?

David J. Smith: Right. So for every maybe hour of time doing an experiment on the Space Station, you’ve probably done 100 or even more hours of work on the ground in your laboratory to make sure you really understand the system and the hardware that you’re using. So, we do a lot of ground experiments before anything flies to space.

And we also have some ways of mimicking the space environment here on the ground. Radiation facilities, there are certain ways of mimicking microgravity to some extent, depending on the organism you’re working with. But really, I think the prize for a lot of people in the field of space biology is getting something flown to the Space Station. And right now the program’s really excited about doing experiments beyond low orbit, which is where the Space Station is right now. We want to get outside of earth’s magnetic field and really get hit with heavy radiation to see — sorry, we, not meaning me personally, but the model organisms that we fly, so that we can understand what happens when terrestrial life gets exposed to high radiation.

And the reason we’re going to use model organisms to do that is so we can better inform how to protect us, humans, someday, once we leave low earth orbit and go to Mars or other destinations in the solar system.

Host: Well, also as you think of the Space Station that’s flying around the earth in orbit, it’s still protected by the magnetosphere to a certain — not as much as we are, but they still have a certain amount of protection. But then you imagine, once you’re out in that void, you know, cislunar…

David J. Smith: You’re vulnerable.

Host: Yeah, it’s completely different.

David J. Smith: Listen, we can’t predict really solar flares. We get a little bit of warning. After a big one’s happened, you’ve got, I think it takes eight minutes for…

Host: For it to arrive to earth?

David J. Smith: For light to arrive to earth. My point is that we really need to understand what happens, especially with ionizing radiation, and what’s going to happen to terrestrial life in that unprotected void between planets, and even once you get to Mars, Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field, and so we’re going to have to figure out ways there to shield life that we send to Mars, make sure it doesn’t get fried.

Host: It seems like you’re not going to lack any amount of experiments and things to work on to try to figure this all out, to figure this puzzle out.

David J. Smith: Thankfully, I’m not doing it by myself. There’s a ton of people here at Ames, other NASA centers, and of course the investigators that we fund. Everybody’s got their investigations that are all kind of driving toward that same end goal.

Host: Do you work with a lot of people in the Bay Area, is there different groups?

David J. Smith: Yeah, we’re really lucky here. We’ve got some great universities and great companies just down the road. I’ve got a collaborator at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Host: Yes, that’s right on the other side of the Bay, right?

David J. Smith: Yeah, it’s about 40 minutes from here. And we’re working together on what will be called microbial tracking two. It’s a flight experiment that will hopefully fly next autumn to the Space Station. And what we’re going to do is collect samples from the crewmembers, the surfaces of the Space Station, and air samples, bring them back to the ground, and using some of the latest and greatest molecular biology tools at Lawrence Livermore and at the Jet Propulsion Lab and at Johnson Space Center and here at Ames, we’re going to comprehensively characterize everything we find from the Space Station.

So, we’re trying to make sure that the longer a closed spacecraft is occupied by humans, that something doesn’t go wrong. Have you ever gotten sick after traveling on an airplane?

Host: Absolutely, like every single time. The time change will even mess you up.

David J. Smith: Right, because the inside of that aircraft is not necessarily pristine.

Host: Yes, it’s recycling sick people’s air.

David J. Smith: And you’ve got recirculated air, and the tray table you dropped down hasn’t always been wiped clean.

Host: Or the coffee pot, for that matter.

David J. Smith: That’s right. So, think about a crew in the Space Station or eventually on its way to Mars. The longer they’re in that closed environment, it’s not like they can just open a window and air it out. So, we’re really trying to understand how the microorganisms inside a closed or built environment change over time the longer that environment is occupied. So, the microbial two — excuse me, the microbial tracking two experiment that we’re flying, led by the scientist Crystal Jaing at Lawrence Livermore, that’s really what we’re going to be trying to examine. How does it change over time, are there any potential pathogens that are emerging?

Host: Okay, different situations. So, if I’m somebody who’s super interested in space biology, where do I go to get more information? I’m guessing you go to NASA.gov, or you guys have…

David J. Smith: That’s a great starting point. We also have a space biosciences division website, and all of our researchers have homepages that describe the kinds of topics they tackle in their laboratories, so definitely take a look at that.

Host: There’s no lack of content for you to…

David J. Smith: There’s no lack of content. The other thing you can do if you’re not quite ready to come work for NASA, you still are in school, is take a look at the scientists that are funded by the NASA Space Biology Program. All of those are posted online as well, too. And as I mentioned before, they’re all across the country at many different institutions. And so, if you’re a student interested in getting trained in space biology, a good idea would be to plant yourself at one of those schools and work with the faculty members there that are funded by the space biology program.

Host: Excellent. Thanks a lot for coming on over, Dave.

David J. Smith: My pleasure.

[End]