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Fields of Research
The ISS represents a quantum leap in the capability to conduct research on orbit. It will serve as a laboratory for exploring basic questions in a variety of disciplines, and as a testbed and springboard for exploration. Research on the ISS will include commercial, scientific, and engineering research in the following areas:


Biomedical Research and Countermeasures
Researchers seek to understand and control the effects of the space environment on space travelers (e.g., muscle atrophy, bone loss, fluid shifts).

Long-term Benefits: Enhance the safety of short-term as well as long-term space travel, develop methods to keep humans healthy in low-gravity environments, advance new fields of research in the treatment of diseases.

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Fundamental Biology
Scientists study gravitational effects on the evolution, development, growth, and internal processes of plants and animals. Their results expand fundamental knowledge that will benefit medical, agricultural, and other industries.

Long-term Benefits: Advance understanding of cell, tissue, and animal behavior; use of plants as sources of food and oxygen for exploration; improve plants for agriculture and forestry. Understanding the biological effects of extended exposure to gravity levels found on other planets.

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Biotechnology
Current technology indicates that a microgravity environment has enabled researchers to grow three-dimensional tissues that have characteristics similar to body tissues and to produce protein crystals to aid in novel pharmaceutical development..

Long-term Benefits: Assemble and propagate three dimensional tissue with form and function of native tissue (e.g. malignant tumors, functional and/or secreting tissue constructs); provide information to design new classes of drugs to target specific proteins and cure specific diseases.

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Fluid Physics
The behavior of fluids is profoundly influenced by gravity. Researchers use gravity as an experimental variable to explain and model fluid behavior in systems on Earth and in space.

Long-term Benefits: Improved spacecraft systems designs for safety and efficiency; better under-standing of soil behavior in Earthquake conditions; improved mathematical models for designing fluid handling systems for powerplants, refineries, and innumerable other industrial applications.

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Advanced Human Support Technology
Researchers develop technologies, systems, and procedures to enable safe and efficient human exploration and development of space.

Long-term Benefits: Reduce the cost of space travel while enhancing safety; develop small, low-power monitoring and sensing technologies with applications in environmental monitoring in space and on Earth; develop advanced waste processing and agricultural technologies with applications in space and on Earth.

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Materials Science
Researchers use low gravity to advance our understanding of the relationships among the structure, processing and properties of materials. In low gravity, differences in weight of liquids used to form materials do not interfere with the ability to mix these materials opening the door to a whole new world of composite materials.

Long-term Benefits: Advance understanding of processes for manufacturing semiconductors, collids, metals, ceramics, polymers, and other materials; determine fundamental physical properties of molten metal, semiconductors, and other materials with precision impossible on Earth.

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Combustion Science
The reduction of gravity allows scientists to simplify the study of complex combustion (burning) processes. Since combustion is used to produce 85 percent of Earth's energy, even small improvements in efficiency and reduction of soot production (a major source of pollution on earth) will have large economic and environmental benefits.

Long-term Benefits: Enhance efficiency of combustion processes, enhance fire detection and safety on Earth and in space, improve control of combustion emissions and pollutants.

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Fundamental Physics
Scientists use the low gravity and low temperature environment to slow down reactions allowing them to test fundamental theories of physics with degrees of accuracy that far exceed the capacity of Earthbound science.

Long-term Benefits: Challenge and expand theories of how matter organizes as it changes state (important in understanding superconductivity); test fundamental theories in physics with precision beyond the capacity of Earth-bound science.

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Earth Science and Space Science
The International Space Station will be a unique platform with multiple exterior attach points from which to observe the Earth and the universe.

Long-term Benefits: Space scientists will use the location above the atmosphere to collect and search for cosmic rays, cosmic dust, anti-matter and "dark" matter. Earth scientists can obtain global profiles of aerosols, ozone, water vapor, and oxides in order to determine their role in climatological processes and take advantage of the longevity of ISS to observe global changes over many years.

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