LC 40

Today we, along with the other payloads and guests, were invited to view the Falcon 9 rocket vertical on the launch pad! We got pretty close on the grass just outside the pad - it was EXTREMELY bright outside..

The Night Shift

SSPF as we entered tonight

The Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF) is the location of our lab.  It is midnight on 4/13/2014 and Tara, Miya, Emily and I have been here since 9:30 PM EST along with our NASA support teams. 

KI hands over hardware to T Cell Team

Handover of the flight hardware from Kayser Italia to the T Cell Team in the laboratory before the start of isolation of the T cells.

LRS sitting in a 50 ml tube

It will be a long night since we are isolating T-cells from the LRS and buffy coat blood bank samples.  We have 10 independent human samples prepared; we use the best 8 for the experiment (n=8). The photo on the left shows a LRS at the start of isolation.  Isolation is finished around 3 AM; we then start loading the samples into flight hardware. 

Experimental Unit holds four independent donor samples

Each experiment unit takes approximately 45 minutes to fill and we will finish approximately at 10AM EST.  That is when Kayser Italia (our ESA hardware maker) begin the leak testing the experiment units. The experimental unit is shown to the right, each cell is filled with T cells from individual donors (n=4) we have two EUs for each condition so the total number of donors is 8 for each gravity condition.

More Pictures of the team:

Starting to process our blood samples

Layering blood over Ficoll to separate out the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs)

Adding media to isolated cells

Counting our cells

Filling the Experimental Units (EUs)

There and back again

Unfortunately, we're back in San Francisco again after a week in the Cape.  The launch slated for last night was canceled due to range issues -- you can read more on the Spaceflight Now website here.  We're still waiting for confirmation on the next launch date, but we're hopeful that we'll get T-cell up soon!

L-13

The SpaceX3 launch has been delayed until March 30th, so the countdown clock is back to L-13. The team is back in San Francisco briefly, all a little disappointed that the experiment didn't go up on the 16th.  We took some selfies to cheer ourselves up, and are still very excited for our next opportunity!

Nice shirts!

Full science team photo.  Go T-Cell!

T-cell Team

More photographs of our lab here at KSC and our team!

Tara, Miya, Emily, and Millie:

Science team and Kayser Italia

Us plus the NASA folks from both KSC and ARC:

Tomorrow will be our big day of T-cell isolation before the launch. We plan to start at 8am and will likely work until 2am. Fingers crossed that the rocket launches on March 16!

First day

We're at KSC! Photographers have come by to take pictures of Millie and the lab. We headed over to the Kayser Italia (ESA) lab quickly to take a look at the flight hardware and equipment.

Our KSC Lab

Here's a first look at our lab space at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (courtesy of Millie). All 26 boxes made it safe and sound.  Miya, Tara and I fly to Florida on Sunday morning -- we'll have the task of unpacking all of them and organizing our supplies on Monday.

Supplies

The back end of our lab. Lots of boxes on the left!

We will doing our isolation and hardware loading in the two biosafety hoods at the far end

Final Shipment to Kennedy Space Center!

Today was our third and final shipment of supplies to the lab at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Cape Canaveral, Florida.  All told, we've sent 26 boxes - no small task moving a lab cross-country!

Packing up pipettes

Our loading tools - cleaned, autoclaved and ready to go

Cleaning the hardware for our ground controls

Drying our ground control experimental containers.  So many parts!

 More pictures after the jump!

Official Launch Date!

It's official!  The SpaceX 3 resupply launch that will carry our T-cells to the International Space Station has been moved to March 16th at the (very drowsy) time of 4:41 EST.  Check it out on NASA's launch schedule here.

L-32 days and counting!

Ready, set......

It is officially 2014 and we have heard from NASA that the SpaceX-3 launch date has been set to March 1st! We have already begun shipping supplies to Kennedy Space Center in anticipation of the launch and now that we know the date, the race is on.

Our lab had a "mission patch" designed for our project:








We now have to finalize our experimental schedule, book flights and lodging, etc before we leave for Florida. We will also continue to do ground and simulated microgravity studies in the meantime. We just completed an experiment using a desktop Random Positioning Machine (RPM), which uses two frames to rotate an object on the platform such that its gravity vector averages to 0.
(Photo courtesy of Dutch Space)