Suggested Searches

Making It Work in Space

Season 1Episode 127Jan 17, 2020

Brandon Vessey and Cherie Oubre discuss how they integrate and manage all the human research work in areas such as human performance, health, and radiation for research on the International Space Station, on Earth, and for future space exploration. This is part five of a six part series on NASA’s Human Research Program. HWHAP episode 127.

Making It Work in Space

Making It Work in Space

If you’re fascinated by the idea of humans traveling through space and curious about how that all works, you’ve come to the right place.

“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center from Houston, Texas, home for NASA’s astronauts and Mission Control Center. Listen to the brightest minds of America’s space agency – astronauts, engineers, scientists and program leaders – discuss exciting topics in engineering, science and technology, sharing their personal stories and expertise on every aspect of human spaceflight. Learn more about how the work being done will help send humans forward to the Moon and on to Mars in the Artemis program.

On Episode 127 Dr. Brandon Vessey and Cherie Oubre discuss how they integrate and manage all the human research work in areas such as human performance, health, and radiation for research on the International Space Station, on Earth, and for future space exploration. This is part five of a six part series on NASA’s Human Research Program. This episode was recorded on November 18, 2019.

Houston, we have a podcast

Transcript

Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 127, “Making it Work in Space.” I’m Gary Jordan. I’ll be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, astronauts, all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight. This is part five of our six-part series on the Human Research Program. Today we’re focusing on an element called Research Operations and Integration. At a high level you’ve heard a bunch of different areas so far of the discipline and priorities in the Human Research Program. These folks are the ones that organize it and bring it all together, which, as you might imagine, is a huge task. So, here, to go into detail, on this group that makes everything run together smoothly and in an integrated way for human research is Dr. William Brandon Vessey, goes by Brandon, and Dr. Cherie Oubre. Brandon Vessey is the Deputy Element Scientist for Flight Analogs with NASA’s research operations and integration element of the Johnson Space Center. He provides scientific oversight for ground-based spaceflight analog studies. These are where you put people in an environment that’s kind of like spaceflight, like an isolated habitat on a mountain, for example, and you learn about the different human research areas of spaceflight without flying to space. Cherie Oubre is the Deputy Element Scientist for Flight with NASA’s research operations integration element at the Johnson Space Center. As Deputy Element Scientist for flight, Cherie provides science oversight for Human Research Program studies on the International Space Station. So, here we go, operating and integrating all of the fascinating human spaceflight research across the world with Brandon Vessey and Cherie Oubre. Enjoy.

[ Music ]

Host: Brandon and Cherie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Brandon Vessey: Thanks for having us.

Cherie Oubre: Thank you.

Host: Alright. We’re going to talk about research operations and integration. This is the part of human research that you are a part of, right.

Brandon Vessey: That’s correct.

Host: OK. So, it has a long, not necessarily long and fancy, but it does, it doesn’t really say immediately this is exactly what we do. So, what is it that you guys exactly do?

Cherie Oubre: So, what we do is we take all of the research from the Human Research Program and integrate it into the various platforms that we have available, whether it’s spaceflight or the ground analogs.

Host: OK. So, it’s taking, someone has an idea. This is an experiment I want to do, this is research I want to conduct, and you say, OK, this is how it’s going to work in this setting. This is how it’s going to work on the International Space Station. These are the things you’re going to need to be successful. These are the requirements. These are the constraints. That sort of thing.

Brandon Vessey: Yeah, that’s kind of generally what we’re doing, is taking, as you put it, the ideas from the researchers and really trying to make it something implementable. So, taking it and figuring out what are your requirements for actually getting the research done. What do you need to really meet your objectives, be able to answer the scientific question that you’re trying to answer, and then taking a look at that relative to what’s available and the different platforms that Cherie mentioned. Either figure out where the right fit is to get that work done or when it’s a spaceflight study, figuring out the right way of actually going about implementing that study and the spaceflight environment.

Host: It sounds like a lot of management, a lot of oversight.

Brandon Vessey: There’s a lot of herding cats, as we affectionately refer to managing some of the different investigations and investigators that we work with. A lot of really good ideas that may not immediately be something that we can pull off in terms of actually implementing the research without the tweaks here and there. So, we help the researcher’s kind of figure out what are those tweaks, do them in the right way that’s not going to negatively impact our actual research question or the answer that they’re trying to achieve, but still be implementable in the environment, because sometimes there’s that disconnect between the initial idea and what can actually be done in the particular environment.

Host: So, you’re both in management positions. I’m guessing this means that you’ve been on the research side of things first, so you understand kind of the needs of the researchers and what they are looking to do and then maybe a little bit of flight experience to understand how that could be implemented.

Cherie Oubre: Yeah, so I think we both have been [Principal Investigators] PIs at different experiments. I in particular, have a couple of flight experiments that I’ve been involved with. My background is in microbiology, and so I’ve done post spaceflight microbiology type research.

Host: OK. So, yeah, let’s go, let’s go into your backgrounds to kind of understand what we’re talking about. Cherie, keep going with microbiology. How’d you get started with that, with microbiology?

Cherie Oubre: So, microbiology, undergraduate, loved it. Went to graduate school for it. [Laughter] Had a post-doc with the United States Air Force looking at war fighter health and how to keep troops deployed and healthy and then was lucky enough to come here and did some work with the JSC Microlab and looking at how to keep astronauts safe and healthy in the space environment, both on the operational, how we clean the vehicle side, and research.

Host: So, the microbiology of, I guess, the environment, maybe a little bit of the people too.

Cherie Oubre: Yep, so a little bit of both.

Host: A little bit of both. OK. What kinds of research did you do in the past to, like what sorts of things were you looking at specifically when it comes to microbiology?

Cherie Oubre: So, we’ve looked at different types of hardware that can monitor the environment. So, we’ve done some spaceflight experiments with that. We have also looked at ways to clean the environment and how we need to treat and clean plants for consumption in spaceflight, and then there’s a study that’s actually just starting, that I was part of before I joined this team, that’s looking at the host-pathogen interaction and how those microbes interact with the human and how we can understand how that interaction happens and make sure that infections don’t occur.

Host: All very important work. I know for me, on the ground I use a salad spinner for cleaning some of mine. [Laughter]

Cherie Oubre: Wouldn’t that be great. [Laughter]

Host: That would be nice and easy for when on orbit, but I’m sure it’s more complicated than that. Now, for research operations and integration, there’s two parts. There’s flight and there’s analog. Now, which one are you overseeing?

Cherie Oubre: So, I work with investigators looking at a spaceflight, in particular, on the International Space Station.

Host: OK. So, we’ll get more into that, but first I want to go over to you Brandon. Tell us a little bit more about your history.

Brandon Vessey: Sure. So, undergraduate and all of my graduate experience at University of Oklahoma, Boomer Sooner, in psychology and then industrial organizational psychology. So, how you take psychology and apply it to work. A lot of my work there was focused on leadership, creativity, teamwork, and I kind of took that here to JSC, so previous experiences working with our human factors and behavioral performance element, specifically on the behavioral side. I was a portfolio scientist for the team area, so team dynamics of crews that are in the long duration spaceflight environment. So, if you put, you know, four to six people together for three years in a really confined environment, how do you keep them performing well, happy, healthy, all those good things. From specific PI experience on my end, it was mostly on the studies that we did previously looking at the effects of communication delay on individual and team performance, in looking at that both on the ISS and in the analogs, over different durations of communication delay, since we know for future missions light speed only goes so quick. Communication delays will happen. So, how do we have effective performance of the big team. So, not just the team that’s in the vehicle, but working together with the ground as one overall team to achieve the mission. So, research focused on that, and then also as portfolio scientists overseeing a lot of the different team dynamic studies that were going on in that area.

Host: I can see how conference calls would be a little bit harder if everybody takes 20 minutes to respond to a question.

Brandon Vessey: Exactly.

Host: OK.

Brandon Vessey: Yeah.

Host: It gets a little bit more complicated in deep space. I’m starting to see the breadth of experiences that you guys bring to research operations. There’s a little bit of the microbiology, a little bit of the teams. Brandon, I don’t know if you’ve, I mean there’s awesome research that you’re doing with team dynamics, but it sounds like you can apply those same team dynamics to having the research operations and integration team themselves perform their tasks.

Brandon Vessey: Yeah. I–

Host: Like a management perspective.

Brandon Vessey: I am always very tempted to start research studies on us as an organization, [laughter] and manage to, you know, keep those impulses pushed down a little bit. I always say the most interesting study would be on us.

Host: Yeah.

Brandon Vessey: But, but yeah, it’s definitely come into play, you know, the management of these large sets of studies that we have to integrate both in flight and in the analogs. It’s a complicated process. There’s a lot of different people involved, so being able to manage those dynamics is really important to the job that we do. There’s a lot of folks with a lot of really good ideas that don’t necessarily play well together, and we have to figure out how to make those studies and how to make those individuals work as a cohesive team to get the research done.

Host: It’s like management 101, super important, honestly. So, Cherie, you mentioned you were looking over flight Brandon, and you said analogs.

Brandon Vessey: That’s correct.

Host: This is, we’ve been shooting this word around quite a bit, analog, but it might not be something that people necessarily understand right off the bat. What’s an analog?

Brandon Vessey: Yeah, so analogs are basically, for our purposes, let’s focus in on spaceflight analogs.

Host: OK.

Brandon Vessey: So, we’ll add that word to it. It’s really any environment where we’re able to mimic some key aspect of the spaceflight environment. So, it’s not, we’re really careful about simulation versus analog. A simulation, you’re trying to kind of do everything. You’re replicating everything about a particular environment. With an analog, we’re taking one or two key pieces and trying to replicate those. So, for example, for future missions, we know that crews are going to be physically isolated in an environment for a long period of time. So, that duration in a confined environment, that’s one aspect of spaceflight that we can mimic in these analog environments. We’re not going to put them in, you know, microgravity, while we’re doing that, because we haven’t quite come up with the anti-gravity machines yet, right. But at least that aspect of it we can try to mimic some of the aspects of, see what the effects are on the people, and then be able to generalize that back to future missions.

Host: OK. Yeah, you can’t just throw everyone in space. So, let’s pick something that’s sort of like a spaceflight, like for example, the fact that you’re in a spaceship traveling to Mars, just that idea of being alone on that spaceship how do people perform. I’m guessing this is where some of those team dynamic studies come into play.

Brandon Vessey: Exactly.

Host: Yeah.

Brandon Vessey: Yeah. So, we’ve got a range of different environments that we look at because each one has kind of unique aspects that fill in those gaps in what are the key parts of the spaceflight environment we need to look at. So, we’ve got places that are a little bit more lab like where we keep people isolated and confined for either days or months at a time, to look at those isolation and confinement components. We do bed rest studies to look at some of the effects of microgravity on the body. And then we also have even more extreme environments looking at studies in the Antarctic, where we’re able to not just get the isolation and confinement but also the danger of the environment itself. You know, you go outside, and you’re not in a good situation, similar to spaceflight, if you go outside unprotected, you’re not in a good situation.

Host: OK. That extreme, yeah, the extreme environment, the isolated environment, there’s a lot of, I see where there’s a lot of different places you can put them to research these different areas.

Brandon Vessey: Right, right.

Host: Now, there’s that and then, Cherie, you do the spaceflight stuff. So, in terms of what’s incorporated in research operations and integration, what’s happening in space right now?

Cherie Oubre: So, we have lots of studies going on right now in space. [Laughter]

Host: Yeah, loaded question, yeah.

Cherie Oubre: Yeah. One of the basic things that we do is we like to do spaceflight standard measures. So, that’s kind of taken the normal measures across the human system to look at for longevity. So, we’re trying to get on lots of different astronauts we can compare and get more of an understanding of how things are changing and what areas you may need a little more support for longer duration missions.

Host: So, you pick a couple areas. What’s happening to the human body, what’s happening to their performance, maybe their mind, I don’t know. What do you–

Cherie Oubre: Yeah, so, some muscle measures to look at how the microbiome is changing, how cardiovascular system is altering vision changes, those types of things. So, it’s kind of the whole body is what you’re looking at and the standard measures.

Host: OK. So, then where does research operations and integration come in? What is your role specifically with looking over these spaceflight experiments?

Cherie Oubre: Yeah, so we really start way ahead of the spaceflight. So, the crew is assigned ideally early in the flight queue, and so we know about a year and a half ahead, and we’ll start pitching the crew and getting what studies they’re interested in and they’d like to particular in, and we’ll start doing data collection before flight, anywhere from nine to 12 months before flight we’ll start, all the way up until they launch. And we’ll get that baseline data, that’s kind of their normal data, then we’ll collect data in flight generally, and then we’ll collect data when they return. And we can see how that body changes over the different time course.

Host: OK, so, it’s, yeah. Alright, you’re getting, not only are you thinking about what research do you want to do on the crew. You’re getting feedback from the crew saying this is, “oh, this will be interesting to me, this will be interesting”. So, when those research opportunities come down the pipe, you’re like, ah, this one, I think you’d be interested in this one, this one, because I think ultimately, and correct me if I’m wrong, I think when it comes to research on a human body, naturally, you can’t force anyone to do that, right.

Cherie Oubre: Nope.

Host: It’s got to be voluntary.

Cherie Oubre: Yep.

Host: So, they have to want to sign up for it.

Cherie Oubre: Yep. So, what we do with them is we give them what’s called an informed consent briefing. And so, we show them all the different studies that are available to them, and they get to look at each one, ask questions. Generally, the PIs will give those presentations, so people that are highly interested in those studies really have excitement and energy and interact with the crew, and the crew decides what they want to participate in. Our team takes what they’re interested in and makes what we call a complement of research studies for that particular crew member. And from there, that’s when we begin some of the data collection. We get their consent, we begin data collection, and that’s what we form for their in-flight research complement.

Host: So, it seems like this interaction with the crew helps you to understand their needs and their constraints, because naturally, I mean there’s only a few people in space at a time, right.

Cherie Oubre: Yep.

Host: And there’s a lot of people that want to do research with the crew, and time is one of those very valuable things in space. So, is it part of your job to pick which things happen, which things the crew are able to participate, and to help them help, I guess, the flight teams understand the timelines needed for these elements?

Cherie Oubre: Yeah, so our team works with that complement, that we’ve kind of, they’ll work and identify what studies can be done together and how that fits in, because we are constrained to really not as much preflight but during flight for crew time and blood volumes, because a lot of times they want to do some analytic measures with blood. And then postflight, everybody wants that R + zero-to-seven-day window (within seven days of crew return to Earth). They want to get [Magnetic Resonance Imaging] MRIs and all types of different body measures, and we have a limited amount of time with those crew. And we try to coordinate and make sure we stay with everybody’s requirement windows, and it’s kind of a juggle situation. And if we have off-nominal landings, like we’ve had in the past, we have to re-plan everything that we’ve done and try to maximize the science and minimize any loss.

Host: Yeah. Those poor astronauts. Everybody wants their blood, and everybody wants to put them through a scanner.

Cherie Oubre: That’s right.

Host: So, yeah. It’s your job to limit that. It’s your job to let the researchers know, you know, this is, you’re only going to get this much, and you’re going to have to work with it.

Cherie Oubre: Yeah.

Host: I know most recently we’ve had a few folks on the podcast talk about twin study. This was one of our earlier episodes, and I know specifically with some of the genetics experiments that they were doing as part of the twin study, you know, one of the constraints was, I’m sorry, you only get this much blood, and this is what you have to do to do your epigenetic study, and they had to work with that. So, was it through you that they were actually having those constraints, and how did you work with that?

Cherie Oubre: Yeah, so it was through our group that they did that. Our group has lots of, many years of experience at trying to organize and make sure that we have the right requirements for the blood and actually the windows for blood collection to kind of help us move things around and shift so we can actually collect as much blood as possible but stay within those safe limits for the crew.

Host: I see. OK. Now, I believe it was, we’re talking about research operations and integration here. This is one element of the Human Research Program, we’re going through all the elements right now. It was not research operations and integration all the time. It was something else. What was it before ROI?

Cherie Oubre: So, it was ISS Medical Project. So, International Space Station Medical Project.

Host: And that incorporated everything that you are doing? It incorporated the analogs as well?

Brandon Vessey: Yeah. Well, organizationally, we were doing the same work–

Host: I see.

Brandon Vessey: Before the name change.

Host: OK.

Brandon Vessey: It’s a little bit, the name was a little bit of a historical artifact from the time before the analog work was actually included under what was ISSMP, now ROI. So, previously the element was really focused more on the flight side of things. The analogs, as they exist now, didn’t, they weren’t really stood up yet. We had bedrest studies going on. Those were in sort of a separate group. Around the time that one of our analogs, the [Human Exploration Research Analog] HERA, which is isolation and confinement hab here at JSC, came online, the analogs group got folded into what was ISSMP. So, it became kind of one big happy family working on integrating all these different research studies, getting them put into operations, and we sort of hung onto the name for many years, always with a little bit of pokes at each other about this. It really doesn’t sound quite right for the work we’re doing now. So, we finally came up with a name that we felt like better reflected kind of all the work that we’re doing as one big team.

Host: Yeah, it broadened the scope, right. ISS, you know, medical, things specifically for medical projects on the International Space Station, we’re looking at a lot of different destinations and there’s a lot of great research that can be applied elsewhere. So, yeah, this is broader, and it makes a lot of sense. Now, here’s a good question. Why do we have an integration team, like you guys, to run the show and make sure everything is running smoothly versus just going directly from the people who want to do the research to the end user?

Brandon Vessey: Yeah. It’s really about enabling them to have successful studies. There’s a lot of, especially in-flight, and Cherie can speak more to this, there are a lot of constraints of actually doing the studies in that environment, just paperwork that you need to do along the way, approvals that you need to do along the way, to get from idea to actual implementation. It’s just really something that the Human Research Program set up to try to enable success. So, you build up this internal knowledge within the Human Research Program of how you implement a successful study either in-flight or in the analogs, and that’s not experience or knowledge that the PIs have to build up on their own. So, they’re not having to learn from scratch every time. They can start from a good spot and also have us to facilitate some of that groundwork that needs to happen. And we also end up doing a lot of work to kind of pass back and forth between the PIs and some of the folks in operations. So, we’ve had that experience to build up those relationships, both in-flight and with the analogs, with the different personnel that are actually implementing the studies, scheduling the studies, that sort of thing. So, they have that sort of trust that what’s being given to them to implement isn’t going to hurt anybody. It’s not going to make anybody too nervous and want to drop out of the study. You know, it’s not going to make anybody complain that we’re taking way too much blood from them at any given time, that sort of thing. So, we’re really here to enable the PIs to have successful studies at the end of the day, and that’s kind of where we’re coming from.

Host: So, Cherie, take us through an example of some study. Say someone wants to do human research experiment, pick anyone you want, on the International Space Station. What is the process from idea to getting it on station?

Cherie Oubre: That’s great. A lot of what we do in the Human Research Program is peer reviewed science, so there will be a solicitation. PI will respond to that solicitation with his proposal and his great idea. The peer review will happen. Selections happen, and then that proposal will be given to our group to do what’s called a feasibility assessment to say, OK, this is what this PI wants to do. Could we even implement it as it is? And generally, there are some things that we’ll need to tweak or move some things around, and we’ll pull together the feasibility assessment. We’ll understand what hardware needs to be brought to station. That’s a complicated process that we’re able to usher the PI through and help them out, or if there needs to be new software, and we’ll have to work with all the IT groups and make sure that we can get the software loaded. And then we’ll look at the requirements themselves, what do they need pre-flight, what do they need in-flight, we’ll help them through the institutional review board that will look and make sure that their study is safe and not going to harm the crew in any way. So, we’ll help them and be there for that. Then we’ll help them when it’s time to pitch the crew, so to give the formed consent briefing. We’ll get the crew to participate and say, hey, we like your study. Then we’ll get them signed up. We’ll put them into a complement, and then we’ll start doing data collection. We’ll work out ways to get that data back to the PI because there’s lots of sometimes issues there for data transfer. Then we’ll follow all the way through to the end of the study and make sure that the PI has all the information that they need and they’re getting the data that they need, and in turn, that the elements are getting the research that they need to answer the risks.

Host: Easy peasy.

Cherie Oubre: It sounds easy, right. [laughter]

Host: Yeah.

Cherie Oubre: Really, that’s a quick synopsis of about five years’ worth of work. [laughter]

Host: Oh, that’s an important element, right.

Cherie Oubre: Yeah.

Host: Like PI principal investigator, right. They come to, they want to do some research but it’s, yes, you navigate them through this process, and you have these reviews, but I’m sure it’s, there’s all these other things you don’t even think about, right.

Cherie Oubre: Yep.

Host: Yes, you can do the research, but how are you going to get the research?

Cherie Oubre: Yeah.

Host: And who gets to benefit from this research. And then all these other elements about doing, you know, yes, you have this idea, and maybe you get the hardware say to do the experiment, but now you need to find the time, now you need to have a specific process, and there is a lot of process. Because as we mentioned, crew time is very valuable.

Cherie Oubre: That’s right.

Host: So, they got to fit it in between everything else they’re doing. It is a lot of work. I definitely respect what you guys are doing. I think, and I want to make sure I’m getting this clear. I feel like I’m siloing these two things. I feel like I’m siloing the ISS, the flight portion, and I’m siloing the analog portion. Is there talk in between? Am I missing other elements that you guys are doing?

Brandon Vessey: Yeah. So, there’s definitely talk in between. A lot of the studies that happen in the analogs either concurrently or just afterwards are going to go into flight. So, there’s a lot of pass back and forth on what are the issues or challenges that you might have had with this study in this environment, and how can we apply those lessons to another environment. You know, we’re taking a study that was in a 45-day ground isolation. It broke in this, this, this, and this way. Let’s make sure it doesn’t break the same way on ISS, right. Similarly, as you mentioned kind of at the top, Cherie and I have different experience in terms of our background and expertise, and our whole team is like that. There’s a lot of expertise in a lot of different areas. You know, we’ve got people that specialize sometimes in more the flight or the analogs portions, but we’re able to pull on that expertise to kind of inform either on a specific topic area or even a specific experiment. Again, if you know, somebody has worked with a PI for the last three years, that’s a body of knowledge that we can pull on going to a different environment, whether it’s going from flight to analogs or vice versa. So, there’s a lot of cross talk, a lot of learning lessons. You mentioned process. We try to kind of apply lessons learned from each other’s processes. So, for instance, if we’re setting up a process to integrate a bunch of different studies together into one complement, like Cherie said, that’s something that we’re doing across both environments. So, what are the lessons that we’ve learned in doing that in the analogs in flight that apply to both. Where can we standardize some of those things in ways that make the science better, that make the science more successful.

Host: Yeah, good science, good data, that’s the ultimate goal here.

Brandon Vessey: Right.

Host: Now, we talked about a few. We’ve had a couple examples. We talked about the International Space Station as a place to do research. We’ve talked about many of the, a few of the analogs. What are some other examples? What are other areas that you guys are touching? I think, Cherie, you talked about managing, like working with the crew and understanding what the crew prefers to do. What other elements are part of this research integration operations?

Cherie Oubre: I think it’s just really a big team of people that work together and want to get the right science done and really to be facilitators for that PI science, so we want to make sure we get the requirements in there, even though we know we’re constrained with crew time or blood volume or whatever it is. We want to make sure that we can do our best to manage that an enable the right science to happen and take the critical measures and be successful and really get that data. I think those are our big things.

Host: Now, you know, going back to different platforms that we’re researching on International Space Station, you mentioned HERA, this isolation habitat that’s here at the Johnson Space Center. I’m sure you don’t have like a standard process maybe, or maybe you do, but just here is the process from start to finish on how to do this thing. Are they all different? Do you have to treat them all with unique, like a unique child, and just have a different process for each of them?

Brandon Vessey: Yeah, there are definitely aspects in common, but they all have their own unique flavor. Some of them have unique steps. You know, and all of them, like Cherie said, were kind of cradle to grave in the studies as far as getting sort of those initial ideas, that initial proposal, assessing it for feasibility, figuring out where it might need to be tweaked, where it might be OK. And then enabling the actual data collection itself, getting the data back to the PIs, kind of closing things out there. Where it differs is a lot of the detail. So, for instance, in the analogs, a lot of times we’re not just taking the research into the environment, which is plenty complicated on the space station, but in a lot of cases, we’re actually running the environment as well or have a hand in running and setting up the environment. So, for instance, with the HERA, we’re not only facilitating the actual research itself in terms of kind of overseeing the specific studies, but we actually run the environment. So, we staff the mission control for the facility. We select the subjects for the facility. We set up the mission scenario. We support all of the hardware, the habitat itself. So, it’s kind of a really kitchen sink approach to everything there, and that’s for one of the analogs. Then, for the serious missions that we’re conducting in Moscow Russia, it’s a little bit of a different flavor. So, we’re still facilitating the science, but the folks actually running the facility are at [Russia’s Institute for Biomedical Problems] IBMP, one of the space organizations in Russia. So, we’re kind of working a little bit more in partnership with them rather than just running the whole show. So, we work with them jointly to design the scenario to select the subjects, to set up some of the conditions, but on a day-to-day basis, they’re running the actual facility. They’re running the mission. Sort of a similar situation at envihab, which is a bed rest facility in Cologne, Germany, that we work with for our bed rest studies. Again, it’s in Germany. Our folks are not on the ground. They’re running it day-to-day. That’s DLR handling that, the German Space Agency. What we’re doing is again working with them to kind of set up the initial requirements, what do we need, what we don’t need, what are the types of subjects we need, and then they kind of handle the day-to-day there. But we’re sort of running in the background to make sure our science is set up the right way, our science is supported in the right way, that they can get the data they need. And then we’re sort of even one more step back when it comes to the Antarctic, because we’re really, really kind of separated from what’s going on down on the ice there just due to the distance, the limited bandwidth, the communication challenges that happen there, were really reliant on National Science Foundation personnel at the different national science foundation stations in the Antarctic to run our study. So, a lot of our job is making sure they’ve got the material up front on the studies before they go down to the ice, because they may lose communication. Communication may be spotty. They need to be really autonomous when they’re running the studies for us and supporting the studies for us. So, it’s a different flavor in every environment that we work with. At the end of the day, we’re still trying to facilitate the science to make sure that data is collected in the right way and the data gets back to the PIs, but the exact specifics kind of change from environment to environment, and it’s always sort of a fun part of the challenge to figure out going into a new environment or working with an environment, what’s the best way to make that happen.

Host: Yeah. It seems like you’re integrated in a way to make sure that you’re getting the best science possible. Because there are so many things going on, and you’ve mentioning places all over the world. You mentioned Houston. You mentioned Moscow. You mentioned Cologne, Germany. You mentioned Antarctica. I mean this is no joke. So, to make sure that the results are consistent, right. So, that’s where your integration comes in. You make sure you’re asking the same questions, make sure you’re using the same processes and ways of distributing the information so that more people can get their eyes on it, in a good way, because it’s valuable data. That sounds like where it’s, it’s a lot of work. I’m really getting a sense of scale for how much work you put into this stuff. Now, what sorts of questions are we asking in all of these places? There’s analogs all over the world, right. We mentioned that, and we mentioned that we are asking these questions. What are the scenarios that we’re putting people in, and what are the questions that we’re asking when they’re there?

Brandon Vessey: So, I’ll just kind of run through it. We’ll do a list here. [Laughter] It’s probably a little easier for me to organize my thoughts that way.

Host: OK, OK.

Brandon Vessey: So, we’ll start with the HERA, Human Exploration Research Analog here at JSC. We do 45-day isolation and confinement studies there. So, that’s that key aspect of spaceflight that we’re trying to be an analog for, is the isolation and confinement. The majority of studies there are behavioral in nature. We’re starting to do a lot more human factors work there. So, looking at design of the habitat, design of the work, how can we make that better offer future missions? There’s also a fair number of physiology studies there. So, looking at microbiome, looking at changes within the human, looking at things like stress markers. It’s really wide ranging, but it’s kind of focused on those two areas. Right now, we’re really focused in on what are the effects of limited volume and privacy on the crew. So, if they’re in a really small space, and they don’t have much privacy, which is sort of the situation we anticipate for future missions, what’s that going to do to the crew. So, we’ve actually modified the facility to take away some privacy compared to previous years. We’ve modified the volume to be a little smaller than previous years, so we’re able to do those comparisons. Future years, we’re going to be looking at things like how to better train the crew, how to better support the crew when they’ve had limited training, those sorts of things. So, lots of really wide-ranging questions there. With the SIRIUS missions in Moscow, it’s sort of a similar flavor. It’s also isolation and confinement studies, but it’s over a longer period of time. So, there, last year with our SIRIUS 19 mission, we did four months of isolation. Next year, we’re moving into eight months, and then the following year we’re going to do 12 months of isolation.

Host: Whew.

Brandon Vessey: So, really looking at what are the effects over time of being in that type of environment, and do they add up over time? So, is it going to, is it worse being in that environment or does it cause additional types of adaptation when you’re there for 12 months versus four months, or does it sort of just plateau out? We don’t quite know yet. So, we’re looking across a wide, wide range of measures, both physiologically but especially behaviorally, both individual and team dynamics there on kind of what’s going on with the people in that environment. With the envihab in Cologne, as I mentioned, we’re doing bed rest studies there, so really looking at the effects of the microgravity environment on people. So, I said earlier, we don’t have quite the anti-gravity machine worked out yet, but the closest we can get is bed rest, so we put people to six-degree, head-down tilt, and that simulates some of the, and between the bed rest itself and the tilt, simulates some of the effects on the body of losing that pressure of gravity on muscle, bone, fluids shifting more towards your upper torso and head. So, we’re able to study a lot of the physiological adaptations that happen to people when they’re in a microgravity environment. Previous years there, we’ve actually looked at the combined effects of that with elevated CO2, and currently we’re studying countermeasures for the actual microgravity environment. So, we’re using centrifuge to spin the subjects for 30 minutes a day to see if that helps to alleviate some of the effects of the — head-down tilt and the bed rest in terms of some of the negative adaptations that happen, because that might point to whether or not centrifugation, sort of artificial gravity, we call it, is an effective countermeasure for some of those potentially negative adaptations that can happen because of long durations in microgravity. And I’ll wrap up, the Antarctic stations, it’s again a wide range of things that we’re looking at there. As I mentioned, it’s isolation confinement, and we’re adding the extreme environment factor in that case. So, given that, we’ve looked at individual psychology, so how is the mental health of people in an environment like that, where you’ve got that constant pressure of the environment outside as dangerous. “I’m isolated, I’m confined, I can’t really freely get out or talk to people the way I would in my normal life.” Looking at team dynamics in that environment, how are those affected, and then just starting to look at, at least when it comes to the kind of formal human research programs, some of the physiological effects on people. So, for instance, how their immunology might change as a result of being in that environment with that constant low-level stress and that isolation, that confinement again.

Host: OK. Yeah, a lot of examples. Awesome job. [laughter] So, they, yeah, you put them in all of these different environments, and you ask a bunch of questions to see how can this relate to stuff we want to do later. What was fascinating to me, the one I pulled out, is the smaller and smaller spaces sort of thing, that is absolutely something we’re looking at right now with Orion. It’s in the very near future. So, it’s something that the crew is going to have to deal with very soon. It’s understanding those team dynamics and those levels of stress will be extremely interesting. You mentioned though, you know, you’re doing all of these analog studies, and you have these facilities, you got a couple things that you’re doing, but the process of actually start to finish, having an idea and then executing it, Cherie, you already alluded to this, you already alluded to five years. You know, this whole process of from an idea to execution can be five years. So, what does that mean? Does that mean, is that the only thing you touch? You only touch that spot right where there’s an idea, and you execute it, and then you’re done. Are you involved afterwards? Are you integrating these ideas to promote them or spread them out or share them? Is there any effort like that? What does that five-year span look like?

Cherie Oubre: So, we kind of talk about what happens during that five-year span. Once the study is done, the PI takes their data, and they will publish it. Our amazing communications team does a lot of work with them to promote what they’ve learned and how that impacts the Human Research Program.

Host: So, that’s a huge part of it, right, is naturally you do all this research, you want to get some, you want to understand what’s happening, you want to get that understanding. Now, again, we mention we’re doing this research with different people. We mentioned the analogs, naturally that’s not going to be astronauts all the time. It might be, but you can use a variety of different people. For the International Space Station, you’re stuck with just astronauts. So, I say stuck with just astronauts like it’s the worst thing, [laughter], but I guess for data, you want the widest set possible. But what’s it like interacting with the astronauts and working with them and letting them understand the priority of what people are trying to accomplish with their research?

Cherie Oubre: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think we take for granted sometimes that we work with astronauts on a daily basis, but they’re really highly trained individuals who are excited about what they do, and the more we can tell them what these studies do, the more they’ll be excited about what they are. They want to promote the research that they’re participating in. So, our job, really, is to help them understand what they’re doing and how they can get that out to the public and let them share what they’re doing and be excited about it.

Host: Now, I understand that because of some of the research that’s been done, you know, for example, genetic studies. If you hear, “oh, I’m going to, I want to study your DNA”, and a researcher is trying to tell you that, “oh, this is really important, I want to study your genetics.” I can see the astronauts being like why do you need to study my genetics? That’s an invasion of privacy. You get all these different things. But because of the results, because of the research that’s been going into it, and what we’re finding, from what I’m hearing, more and more astronauts are saying, “yes, I want to participate in this. I want to help with this endeavor.” Do you find that that’s true too, that maybe you have to sometimes pursue in a different way, you know, if you want to do research, this is important, and this is why this is valuable, and this is why you should participate in it?

Cherie Oubre: Exactly. I think that’s a great point. I mean education on what we’re doing and what the goal is really helps a lot, and it’ll get a lot more participation. If the crew understands why you’re doing something, they’re much more willing to donate whatever sample you may need to that effort.

Host: Yeah. So, besides working with the crew and convincing them that this is a good idea, that you should do this, what other challenges do you face whenever you’re trying to do research, human research on the International Space Station? It could be crew. It could be any other challenges that you find when it comes to doing this research.

Cherie Oubre: So, I think the crew is probably your easy part. The institutional review board is probably a little bit more tough because you need to educate them as well at what you’re doing and make sure that you’re doing things in the right way and a safe way. We also have to work with the ISS program to let them know, hey, these are the types of research that we want to do. We’re going to need this much crew time to get this done, and it’s kind of a negotiation on how much crew time we can have, how much the blood volume, it’s kind of a set limit. We work within that. Also, massive hardware and consumables. Because when you’re taking saliva samples, you have consumables that you need to use up there, and then you got to get it back. So, we have to have down mass to be able to return those samples as well. So, it’s kind of a lot of logistics and making sure that everybody understands what we need, when we need it, and the importance of it.

Host: Now, what about for analog participants? How does that change or is it very similar to that?

Brandon Vessey: I think it’s pretty similar. I think the biggest challenge really is that sort of, that integration, the complexity of just, you’ve got all these moving pieces between all the studies, all the different boards and approvals, the actual facilities themselves. Getting all of that to work together and things not be missed along the way, the little details that can get missed. As much as we don’t always love it, we document everything [laughter], and that saves us a lot of time, just making sure that we get the right documentation in place because we can go refer back to that. But that’s kind of a big challenge for the analogs. It’s just the number of moving parts that we’re managing and making sure something doesn’t get dropped along the way. The other big challenge honestly is just things go bump in the night. Equipment breaks. A lot of times either with the facilities or with PI hardware or software or what have you, things go wrong. Off nominal situations happen. Stuff happens that we don’t expect, and a big part of our job is from the start trying to put ourselves in a situation where we don’t have single-point failures. So, we’ve got backups for our backups for our backups, you know, where we can. We’ve got backup plans where we can’t have those backups. And then, you know, we try to anticipate as many of those problems as we can, build in the backups where we can, but stuff still surprises us. Stuff surprises us every single time we do one of these missions, whether it’s in flight, whether it’s on the ground. So, a big part of our job is, OK, something went wrong. What do we do with it? Who do we need to talk to? What’s the time frame we need to talk to them on? How are we going to respond on this in the way that gives us the best signs at the end of the day? You know, a lot of times when stuff like that happens, you can’t get what you originally planned for, but what’s the next best thing that you can get? So, a big part of our job is helping figure that out both from our end and working with the PIs, working with the Human Research Program to figure out sort of at the end of the day, alright, this thing went wrong. This piece of hardware broke. Here are our options. Here’s our recommendation for what we do next, and let’s go from there. Let’s get the best science with what we can still do with what’s available.

Host: That is something that I think people may not necessarily think of immediately, is you talk about all the science we’re doing, and we’re pointing out all of these different investigations and how to run these things. But they don’t go perfectly all the time, and I don’t think it’s a reasonable expectation that they do. So, it does make sense, you know, integrated into that operation should be what happens if something goes wrong? What happens if A goes wrong? You said you are documenting everything. You’re keeping track of all of these things. Tell me about where human research was maybe five, ten years ago, and this process of documentation to get you where you are now. Is it better? Is it more efficient? Do you understand more about how to successfully do human research in space and on the ground?

Brandon Vessey: I would say pretty unequivocal, [laughter] yes to that. We’ve learned a lot of lessons. We’re always learning a lot. That’s something that we pride ourselves on, is beginning a learning organization. So, something went wrong this time? Let’s figure out how to keep it from going wrong in the future. So, yeah, especially, I think, as our eyes come together to integrate not just the science but flight and analog work that’s going on. We’ve learned a lot from each other on the best ways to do things, the best ways to plan for things. So, both in terms of, as you mentioned, just documenting things to make sure that we’re capturing it all, but how we actually implement the work. I think we’re definitely in a better spot now, and we’re always getting better. That’s something that we’re always striving towards, is let’s do better the next time. We’ve got a lot of really conscientious, really high-achieving folks on our team. We’re happy to have them, and they’re always wanting to do better. So, that’s something we’re always working towards.

Host: I do not doubt that when it comes to NASA scientist at all. But, Cherie, when it comes to the International Space Station, we’re talking about 20 years continuously almost. We’re coming up on it, but 20 years of people in space, that’s a lot of data. That’s a lot of human research. I’m sure human research just in general has progressed and become more efficient, as Brandon mentioned, just in that time. What have you seen, just working with the international program, from when you first got this job to now, just how things have changed when it comes to human research?

Cherie Oubre: Yeah, so I think we’re really in a great position right now. We have a wonderful suite of hardware. So, we have hardware that PIs can use and work together, the ultrasound machines, centrifuges. We have blood kits. We have, we have really developed like the basis of a laboratory up there, and we continue to grow that laboratory to increase types of science that we can do. In the future we’ll do some genetics and genomic work in-flight. I mean these are the types of things, we’re constantly trying to push that boundary and that envelop as we move forward and learn more and learn more as we go, because as we go these long duration missions, we’re not going to be able to bring those samples down. We need to have ways to look at it in-flight.

Host: So, going forward, you know, the next step that we’re talking about when it comes to human exploration is the Moon. We’re looking at Artemis, and things are going to change. Like you mentioned, things are a lot farther away. You have a lot more constraints. It’s not quite Mars where you know, you’re going out, and you’re, you know, six months, and you’re gone.

Cherie Oubre: Good luck, yeah. [Laughter]

Host: Yeah, good luck. But, you know, it’s a great platform for understanding what happens when it comes to deep space, and it’s three days away, not bad.

Cherie Oubre: Yeah.

Host: Three to six days away. So, what changes going forward? What have we learned and what can we take from the International Space Station and carry over to flight operations, to operations on the Moon and moving forward from there?

Cherie Oubre: Yeah, so what we’re doing is we’re really trying to look at the space station as a way to test out some of these things that we’re doing and test out some of the hardware and test out some of the research that’s happening, so we’ll understand more and move forward. As we go through these longer missions, were up to three years for Mars, we’re looking at longer duration studies as well. So, we’re looking at something called the integrated one-year mission. So, we’re going to look at that time course. We’re going to do short duration flying, about six weeks to two months. We’ll look at standard what we normally were used to, that six months kind of length of the mission, and then we’ll look at the one year. And in that, we’re doing this integrated suite of 14 different investigations that we’re pulling together for international partner investigations is part of that. So, we’re looking at that whole physiology from head to toe and saying, hey, how does this change over those different time courses, and how can we relate that too much longer distances and longer durations in space?

Host: OK. So, a lot of important stuff coming up definitely in the future.

Cherie Oubre: Yeah.

Host: Is there anything from the analogs that we can take and bring it to the Moon?

Brandon Vessey: Yeah. So, I think I mentioned things going bump in the night. [Laughter] So, one of the things that we are doing in the analogs is testing out a lot of these different pieces of hardware, pieces of software, countermeasures, measures, to make sure that if they’re going to break, they break now. They don’t break when an astronaut is on the Moon or on their way to Mars or on Mars. So, we want to get through those kind of alpha, beta, whatever testing now, figure out where the breaks are, get them fixed. That way all these different things are ready to go when we do deploy them on a real mission. So, if you’re needing a measure to work while somebody is on one of the Artemis missions, you want to make sure before you launch it, it’s really, really ready to work. And so, we kind of put it through its paces in the analogs. As Cherie mentioned, we’re going to use the International Space Station to test some of these things out as well to make sure that some of the radiation exposures in orbit or some of the microgravity doesn’t kind of mess with some of the workings of things. But really making sure that some of these things are ready to go, ready for prime time when it comes to deploying them on a real mission with real astronauts. That’s one of the things that actually attracts a lot of our analog subjects to participate in the missions that they do with us. They’re giving up big parts of their lives to do the missions, but they know that what they’re doing is going to have direct benefits for the astronauts later, whether it’s the results of the research or some of the tweaks that happen with the different hardware, the different software, the different measures as a result of the data that they’re providing while they’re in the analogs.

Host: Wow. It’s a massive amount of work, but it’s important work. So, it’s very much appreciated. Brandon and Cherie, thank you so much for coming on Houston, We Have a Podcast today to talk about these research operations and integration. I have a very big appreciation for what you guys do now because it’s massive. It’s a lot of work, but it’s all important research. So, appreciate your time for talking about it today.

Brandon Vessey: Thanks for having us.

Cherie Oubre: Thank you.

[ Music ]

Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. Great conversation we had with Brandon Vessey and Cherie Oubre today about research operations and integration, huge job that they have. This was part five of our six-part series on the Human Research Program. One more to go. Next week, will be “Space Radiation.” We’ll end the series with that one. If you want to check out some of our other episodes or the many other podcasts that we have through NASA, go to NASA.gov/podcasts. If you like what you’ve heard about human research and you’d like to get involved or maybe research a little bit more about what they do, go to the Human Research Program’s website at guess what, NASA.gov/HRP. If you go to social media and you’re following along with us, we thank you. We are on the NASA Johnson Space Center pages of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Use the hashtag #askNASA on your favorite platform to submit an idea for the show. Just make sure to mention it’s for Houston, We Have a Podcast. This episode was recorded on November 18, 2019. Thanks to Alex Perryman, Pat Ryan, Norah Moran, Belinda Pulido, Brett Redden, Emmalee Mauldin, and the Human Research Program team for helping to bring this all together. Thanks again to Dr. Brandon Vessey and Dr. Cherie Oubre for taking the time to come on the show. We’ll be back next week.