AMA: Member of a team in the NASA HUNCH Extreme Science Divison

[LokoKun]

Hey all,
Thought I'd do a little AMA about the program I'm in since it's pretty cool and not many people know it exists. I'm a member of a NASA HUNCH (High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware) team in the Extreme Science Division. I'm currently a High School Senior graduating soon so I thought I'd share my experience and answer any questions I can since besides the Science and Engineering behind our project, I'm our team's Head of Public Relations.

What is HUNCH?
HUNCH is a educational division of NASA that employs High School Students in a partnership where they either manufacture items for NASA or create their own experiments which are then tested in micro-gravity. I had the opportunity to go to one of 16 schools in the country (USA) that is part of this Extreme Science Division and I have to say, it has certainly changed my life.

What was our experiment this year?
This year our experiment is known as V.I.B.E (Vibration Isolation Box Experiment). What we attempted and successfully have created is a containment chamber that dampens vibration in micro-gravity. As part of the Extreme Science division we were asked to pose a question and then pursue it, build it, test it, answer it. The question we asked was "How would a human embryo develop long-term in micro-gravity and at what point would said human not be able to return to the normal gravity of Earth". This is an interesting question especially when it's being tackled by High School Students. We quickly realized that this question is far to broad in scope to be accomplished in one academic year of work and we narrowed it down to something we can manage. Obviously NASA would have a problem with us doing testing on Human Embryos so we changed our test subject to a Chicken Embryo. Our goal this year was to create an anti-vibration testing chamber that we could put a fertile chicken egg inside and have it be launched to the International Space Station unharmed. This year we focused on the V.I.B.E portion of the experiment which is just the vibration nullification, not the incubator portion.

How did we test this?
As one of the 16 teams in the Extreme Science Division we were invited to Houston, Texas to take part in what is called the "NASA HUNCH Flight Week". During this week we traveled down to Johnson Space Center and Ellington Field where we were able to work aboard NASA's C-9 micro-gravity plane and we flew aboard that plane to test our experiment. I personally did not have the opportunity to fly due me being a younger senior (17). Hopefully next year I will have the opportunity to fly aboard the C-9 plane.


I won't take up this whole block of text with everything we did this year so I will open up the floor up to any and all questions about this program, our project, our experience, etc. Please don't hesitate to ask and I will try to answer as best as I can.

[Deleted]

Name it abortion in space. If you want it clickbaity.

How would microgravity influence those?

[LokoKun]

Name it abortion in space. If you want it clickbaity.

How would microgravity influence those?

Can you elaborate a bit? I'm confused on what you mean when you say "How would microgravity influence those".

EDIT: I think I understand, you're asking how would micro-gravity influence developing human or animal embryos. The simple answer is that while you develop on Earth there is constantly gravitational push on your body. Your muscles develop with that stress and so do your bones. We do not know what would happen if you were to develop said bone structure or muscles in a reduced gravity environment. Right now we only have theories as there is no practical way to test this without sending a pregnant human or developing animal embryo into space.

[Deleted]

Can you elaborate a bit? I'm confused on what you mean when you say "How would microgravity influence those".

Pregnancy terminations in space how microgravity would influence those :X

Your topic does not provide enough controversy to really spark much interest here sorry

[LokoKun]

Pregnancy terminations in space how microgravity would influence those :X

Your topic does not provide enough controversy to really spark much interest here sorry

Sorry, I understood your question after a bit of re-reading and I answered it briefly as an edit to my post.

This topic is not meant to create controversy, it's meant to give a little light on a program that not many people know about and maybe answer a couple questions. In no way am I hoping for an argument, just a discussion about this program, experiment or anything related to this.

If you're asking how an abortion would happen in a micro-gravity environment, I cannot answer that. I don't have enough knowledge in that area to be able to give you an answer I'd be happy with.

[LokoKun]

Why a Chicken egg and not a Rat? Brown rats/mice have a 21/20 day gestation period. Chicken eggs are 22 days.

I think the question is an interesting one. How would microgravity affect bone growth, nerve cells, etc. Would bone density be permanently affected?

How about size when fully grown? Gravity affects height, etc.

You could also do a study on the extra radiation due to being protected less by the magnetosphere... there are a lot of different possible points of view you could take.

Thanks for the great questions.

We chose an egg because it's a contained environment, sending a Rat/Mouse embryo seemed to us at least, much harder than a contained egg. We did explore other types of embryos such as amphibians. They would be harder to contain however the benefit of not having to reduce the vibration as much since it's a less fragile cargo would make things different.

Those are all questions our group would like to answer in the coming years, hopefully before we send any humans on long distance space travel. Perhaps we won't get the answers before then but we can try.

Extra Radiation is another point of view we thought about, but because of time restrain and lack of resources (We're a completely self funded group, raising almost $7,000 just for this years project) we could not get to it this school year.

[Independent voter]

How do you dampen the vibration? Is the box floating in liquid or something?

[LokoKun]

Another question could be, does it affect the gestation time? Or, rather, would a 22 day egg in space be more, less, or same, when it comes to development compared to an egg on earth (in a controlled environment).

Does it affect metabolic rate? Is temperature consistency as important?

That's an excellent question and honestly, I can't answer that. Temperature consistency I can answer as to raise a chicken the temperature has to be between 95 and 100 degree's fahrenheit (Give or take a few degrees).

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How do you dampen the vibration? Is the box floating in liquid or something?

Currently our two "V.I.B.E" boxes use Memory Foam and Springs. Each box has one kind of vibration dampener and we tested which of the two worked best. We also used Silicon Gel Mounts but due to their strength they didn't dampen the vibration as much as just transfer it like a solid.

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Or springs, or gyroscopic.

We considered using gyroscopes however we didn't have time to develop our ideas with them.

[Deezlar]

What do you expect the experiments to discover about the formation of the spine?

Theoretically, a human that had grown to a size beyond toddling in micro gravity could not expect to be able to return to earth and experience a reasonable level of mobility and perambulation...

How could this be tested with small creatures, seeing as the forces and mass involved is so different?

Sounds like a really cool project. Glad you are sharing

[LokoKun]

What do you expect the experiments to discover about the formation of the spine?

Theoretically, a human that had grown to a size beyond toddling in micro gravity could not expect to be able to return to earth and experience a reasonable level of mobility and perambulation...

How could this be tested with small creatures, seeing as the forces and mass involved is so different?

Sounds like a really cool project. Glad you are sharing

What I expect to happen with the formation of the spine is for it to not form directly straight, instead I expect it to form in whatever position the embryo develops in. This is just a guess though. Testing this with smaller creatures is what we're aiming at. Hopefully NASA will see our results and choose our project to be sent to the International Space Station for a 21 day period to test and then send the data back to us for examination.

EDIT: If my responses become less frequent it's because I'm out, when I return I will read through every post and answer every question I can.

[Independent voter]

They measure vibration or impact to a package in Gs I think, at least I've see that on packages I've received, you can put a cheap plastic G indicator in the package to tell if it received a nasty bump or drop.

How many Gs did your package suffer last trip? or do you know? Or how do you judge the impact or vibration?

[nextormento]

A box with springs and foam. Sounds like Kerbal SP tech. Sorry buddy, I can't get past that image :')
I wish you well, though: it truly sounds like a worthwhile program and project :]

[Skandulous]

This was already done on NASA flight of STS-29. 32 chicken egss were sent up by a class experiment but i cant locate their findings.

[apepi]

If having no gravity effects an embryo, does having a heavier gravity impact it?

[Yvaelle]

If having no gravity effects an embryo, does having a heavier gravity impact it?

That would actually be easier to test, since you could do that on Earth with a centrifuge as artificial gravity.

[LokoKun]

If having no gravity effects an embryo, does having a heavier gravity impact it?

That's also a question we could test. Though that would involve keeping a fertilized egg inside of a centrifuge constantly running for around 21 days.

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That would actually be easier to test, since you could do that on Earth with a centrifuge as artificial gravity.

Basically this.

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A box with springs and foam. Sounds like Kerbal SP tech. Sorry buddy, I can't get past that image :')
I wish you well, though: it truly sounds like a worthwhile program and project :]

Thanks mate!

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This was already done on NASA flight of STS-29. 32 chicken egss were sent up by a class experiment but i cant locate their findings.

I actually didn't know that, I'll check it out.

[Illuminance]

Our goal this year was to create an anti-vibration testing chamber that we could put a fertile chicken egg inside and have it be launched to the International Space Station unharmed.

How will you eventually determine whether any effects you observe on the embryo are due to microgravity and not the extreme g-forces experienced during delivery to the space station?

Are you working with any animal physiologists/developmental biologists on the project? It seems like they would have a vested interest and be a good resource.

[LokoKun]

How will you eventually determine whether any effects you observe on the embryo are due to microgravity and not the extreme g-forces experienced during delivery to the space station?

Are you working with any animal physiologists/developmental biologists on the project? It seems like they would have a vested interest and be a good resource.

For the first question, we believe that if we send up the embryo right before it begins development we can get an accurate reading and hopefully nullify any chance for the extreme G-force of liftoff to affect development.

Right now we're not working with any outside scientists on this project, we're hoping when/if we get the green-light for the next phase THEN we can start working with outside sources. As of right now we don't have the contacts or publicity (Though I've been prying at the media for a while now) to attract large attention, this program is also not well known at all.