Testimony Date: 02/14/2024
Congress Session Name: 118th Congress (Second Session)
Witness: Robert J. Ferl
Witness Credentials: Distinguished Professor and Assistant Vice President for Research, University of Florida and Co-chair, Committee on Biological and Physical Sciences Research in Space, 2023–2032, Space Studies Board and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Chamber: House
Committee: Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
THE BIOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES IN SPACE DECADAL SURVEY
Statement of
Robert J. Ferl, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor and Assistant Vice President for Research
University of Florida
and
Co-chair of The Biological and Physical Sciences in Space Decadal Survey, 2023-2032
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
before the
Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
U.S. House of Representatives
February 14, 2024
Chairman Babin, Ranking Member Sorensen, and distinguished members of the Subcommittee thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Rob Ferl, and I am a Distinguished Professor and Assistant Vice President for Research at the University of Florida, and Co-Chair along with Krystyn Van Vliet of Cornell University, of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Decadal Survey in the Biological and Physical Sciences in Space.
Today's speakers focus on how we will operate in space beyond the International Space Station (ISS). I am here to address what we should do in space on and beyond the ISS, and why it is essential for the United States. These concepts of the “what” and the “why” were the very purpose of the biological and physical sciences (BPS) in space decadal survey, a congressionally mandated study recently completed and delivered to NASA, Congress, and the White House. The report describes the value of this field and its role in American leadership in space and establishes priorities for the next decade. BPS science, conducted since the first US space missions, deals with the fundamental principles that govern the effects of spaceflight on biological and physical systems – how, for example, fluid flows in space compared to terrestrial gravity affects human biology down to the cellular level and the transfer of cryogenic fuels on the systems level. So many of the physical forces that shape our understanding of the world on Earth simply do not apply directly in space. BPS science guides the development of understanding, leading to the engineered vehicles that support life and exploration in space.
Our report, Thriving in Space – Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research, a Decadal Survey for 2023-2032, was released in September 2023. It is only the second decadal survey in this field, and the first one produced since NASA moved biological and physical sciences into the Science Mission Directorate. It results from the work of over sixty volunteers from academia, government, and industry, working over two years, holding data gathering sessions, and soliciting inputs from the scientific community, including over 350 input papers.
The title of our survey, Thriving in Space, is an intentional description of the body of work. Over the past 50 years we have talked about going to space. Now we are talking about living and working and staying in space, and soon on the Moon, and Mars. Thriving in Space captures that bold transition from tentative sojourning, to establishing permanent presence. Indeed, over the past decades we have gone from occasional space sorties to a continuous occupation of space. The United States has had astronauts on orbit continuously since November 2, 2000, when Expedition 1 arrived at the International Space Station. The number of people in space, and the number of companies moving their processing into space, has risen to the point where the ISS is at maximum capacity, and yet the demand continues to increase.
This increase in demand and interest in space both requires and is enabled by the science that underpins our ability to live and work and discover in space.
The Space Science Decadal Surveys
The space science decadal surveys have been essential for our nation, NASA, and their respective scientific communities, and are admired and emulated worldwide. They establish the priorities within our disciplines and have been vital in assuring American leadership in the space sciences. Numerous well-known scientific missions, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Parker Solar Probe, and the Perseverance Mars rover, have resulted from the prioritization process established in decadal surveys over many years. Unlike the other space sciences, the biological and physical sciences do not have large, distinct missions like telescopes or planetary rovers. Instead, they comprise hundreds of experiments conducted in areas such as growing plants for food and oxygen generation, studying materials behavior in the space environment, and conducting fluids and combustion research. One of the significant new developments in our study was the recommendation to create focused research campaigns consisting of related experiments and hardware intended to make substantial advances in specific areas to benefit the American space program and the nation at large.
Biological and Physical Sciences in Space
Our decadal survey has prioritized the science in this field to provide a basis for the United States’ expanding presence in space. This includes finding new ways to feed and support astronauts in Earth orbit, on the surface of the Moon, and eventually Mars. It also contains research on new materials, processes, and manufacturing that can enable astronauts to survive longer and accomplish more during their missions. There has been an American astronaut in orbit every single day for over two decades now, but to sustain that presence and to fully reap the benefits of hundreds of billions of dollars already invested, we need to develop focused research campaigns that can provide the basis for going from merely visiting space to thriving in space. This will be challenging as the International Space Station is retired and we begin transitioning to commercial low Earth orbit platforms and returning Americans to the Moon. The difficulty arises from the critical need for this body of science to feed both the LEO ecosystem development and the exploration of deep space.
BPS is the science that seeks an understanding of the unique forces that spaceflight imposes on biological and physical systems. Fluid flow in space, for example, is governed by dramatically different forces than when gravity dominates on Earth. Flames are different when gravity is no longer driving convection. Biological systems, which are largely fluids, must adapt to an environment for which there is no evolutionary preparedness. BPS enables the engineering needed to create our space vehicles and to live inside them. BPS feeds the fundamental science that allows the Human Research Program at NASA to understand the clinical effects on humans in space.
As we open deep space exploration and expand LEO presence for development, there can be no gaps in the ability of BPS science to continue. We cannot, for example, trade a few experiments on the Artemis vehicles for the thousands of experiments that are conducted on the ISS. There must be a smooth transition from ISS to commercial station so as to fully inform Artemis while also driving LEO development.
Our BPS decadal survey prioritized the research in the field over the next decade by establishing eleven key scientific questions to be answered—a substantial reduction and refocusing from the dozens of questions in the 2012 decadal survey. Our report also recommends that some of these questions be retired after they have been substantively answered; in other words, the science research should not be continued if the return on investment diminishes, enabling funds to be directed to more productive areas. The BPS field is not a sandbox for scientists to play in; the goal is to produce benefits for the space program.
For the first time, the biological and physical sciences in space decadal survey also included research campaigns, a series of focused experiments intended to serve a defined goal. Research campaigns, in some cases, will require new hardware. We conducted a technical risk and cost evaluation process to gauge the scope of these campaigns. However, substantial unknowns exist in how these campaigns can be performed, meaning that any cost estimates have enormous ranges. What we do know is that these activities are not inexpensive, and we caution that the total costs of conducting current BPS activities in space are higher than the small BPS budget reflects because of all the things associated with supporting astronauts during their time in orbit. That difference will have to be taken into account once we transition to a more commercial approach where the costs will no longer be subsumed into the NASA ISS operations budget.
Key Science Questions
Our report’s eleven key scientific questions span three significant research themes in and about the space environment. The three themes are:
Adapting to Space - Life in space operates differently than life on Earth. It is critical to understand how the space environment impacts human beings as well as the plants and microbes that will be part of future habitat systems.
Living and Traveling in Space - Human exploration of the Moon and Mars will require longer-duration space missions. For these missions to be successful, it is essential to understand how biological and hardware systems interact over the years and how to derive resources to explore new places sustainably.
Probing Phenomena Hidden by Gravity or Terrestrial Limitations - Fundamental processes that are not observable on the Earth can be readily seen in spaceflight when gravity is removed from the equation. Space-based laboratories provide the opportunity for significant scientific gains.
Research Campaigns
Our report recommended two research campaigns for the future, which we named BLiSS and MATRICES.
BLiSS - The Bioregenerative Life Support Systems (BLiSS) campaign is targeted to build and understand the systems that would provide high-quality food, refresh air and water, process wastes, and enable the creation of space environments sustainable for long periods of time independent of Earth. BLiSS would enable understanding of the multiple biological phenomena at play while providing a distinct technology gain for space exploration and presenting high return-on-investment for development of sustainable technologies for Earth.
MATRICES - The Manufacturing Materials and Processes for Sustainability in Space (MATRICES) campaign addresses two challenges in the journey and destination of space travel and habitation: the limited mass of resources launched from Earth for long journeys and limited knowledge of how to repeatably use resources from both the Earth and space to manufacture and repair the world around us, with minimal impact to that world. This campaign envisions the types of materials science, complex fluid dynamics, and manufacturing, near and far from equilibrium conditions, that will be enabled over the next decade in an expected ecosystem that includes ISS, commercial space destinations in low Earth orbit, and planetary space experimental platforms.
In addition to the two research campaigns, the decadal survey included a multi-agency opportunity and one research infrastructure concept. Probing the Fabric of Space-Time (PFaST) is envisioned as a campaign-style, multi-agency opportunity centered on deploying an advanced quantum sensing network. This extremely large-scale research and technology effort scales well beyond the sole domain of NASA. The committee recommended that this opportunity be actively pursued, but only as a multi-agency effort where non-NASA sources provide a substantial majority of the funding. In addition, Polar Radiation of Model Organisms (PRoMO) is a notional concept of future research infrastructure that describes an opportunity for using a space vehicle not currently available to science that underpins the health-risk-based decision process inherent in exploration beyond low Earth orbit. This concept could enable crewless research investigations of physical systems and organisms, including mammals, for extended exposure durations of interest to several key scientific questions.
Funding, Competition, and Benefits of Discovery
This will cost more money. The BPS is a little over one percent of the Science Mission Directorate’s budget and a tiny fraction of the NASA budget. But the science has been underfunded for many years, resulting in instability and inability to focus on useful goals. If the United States wants to maintain its leadership role for the next generation of space science and exploration, funding for BPS research will have to increase tenfold before the end of the decade. This level of funding is necessary to support a robust and resilient program that can meet the nation’s needs and keep it at the forefront of space science. Currently, China has a space station in orbit and is conducting the same kinds of research that Americans have led for decades. Indeed, we are now seeing them perform similar experiments to those we conduct on the ISS. Nobody doubts their resolve to catch up with us and surpass us.
The science of living and working in space both enables space exploration and richly informs life on Earth. It feeds the national need to lead in the development of LEO for both science and development, and deep space for sustained human presence for discovery. Without an ever-increasing understanding of the phenomena and principles that guide both physics and biology in space, we risk the success of our exploration of space. We risk our national goal of leadership in space. With increasing the base of fundamental science understanding of space, we ensure a reliable, sustainable and effective exploration of space and national leadership in space.
Conducting science in space uniquely expands our understanding of the natural universe, and directly translates to applications on the Earth. This is not just the simple derivation of technological spin-offs. In fact, spin-offs are very much a secondary justification. Yes, we will learn about 3D printing organs on the ISS to better inform human health on Earth. However, the deeper value of this science is expanding boundaries and understanding and making new discoveries that inform how we do other things. The ISS has produced the coldest place in the universe in order to study the fundamental properties of matter. To explore space and do science in space is to gain fundamental knowledge about the way the universe works and how life on Earth succeeds. The science questions we prioritized for this decade are key to enabling space exploration, cooperation, and competition on the way to the moon and Mars — and key to discoveries and benefits on Earth that none of us can imagine today.
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The Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations in Thriving in Space – Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research, a Decadal Survey for 2023-2032 can be found in Appendix F of the report, pp. 301-306 on the National Academies Press Website.
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An archived webcast of the hearing can be found on the House Science, Space, and Technology’s Website.