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Program Eligibility

Participants are assigned to one of three Emphasis Groups while at the Kennedy Space Center. Working within the Emphasis Groups, participants gain new learning through engaging in experiential research opportunities. A typical day in SLSTP is comprised of experiential research (approximately 5 - 6 hours); lectures on topics related to space flight and research (approximately 2 - 3 hours) with tours occurring at scheduled intervals.

EMPHASIS GROUP DESCRIPTIONS
Trainee research projects are distributed among the following three Emphasis Groups: Controlled Biological Systems (CBS), Ecological Programs, and Flight Engineering & Management Program.
 
CONTROLLED BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS (CBS)
When humans establish permanent bases on the lunar surface or travel to Mars for exploration, they will continue to need food, water and air. For long-term missions it will not be economically feasible to resupply these life support elements from Earth. Humans will need to develop systems to produce food, purify their water supply and create oxygen from the carbon dioxide they expel. Physical-chemical processes can perform the two latter tasks, but only biological processes can perform all three. Biological systems utilize plants and microorganisms to perform these life support tasks in a process termed bioregeneration. A life support system that performs these regenerative functions, whether strictly by biological means or a combination of biological and physical-chemical methods, has been termed Advanced Life Support (ALS). ALS is a tightly controlled system, using crops to perform life support functions, under the restrictions of minimal volume, mass, energy, and labor.
 
Research on human life support began in the 1950's with oxygen regeneration using algae. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) became interested in the ALS effort in the late 1970's in order to support long-term space missions. Since that time, the CBS program at NASA has examined growing plants for food and oxygen regeneration, and use of physical chemical and biological methods to process waste into usable resources. There are three NASA centers involved in the CBS program; Johnson Space Center, Ames Research Center, and the Kennedy Space Center. At the Kennedy Space Center, a life support effort called the CBS Breadboard Project studies crop production and biological waste processing in an integrated manner.
 
The KSC-CBS Breadboard Project philosophy is to use biological systems to recycle material through an ALS. Humans take in oxygen, food and water, and expel carbon dioxide and organic waste. Plants utilize carbon dioxide, and produce food, release oxygen, and purify water. Inedible plant material and human waste are degraded by microorganisms to recycle nutrients for plants in a process termed resource recovery.
 
SLSTP Trainees working in the CBS laboratories are generally involved in the first testing of plant growth on composted material. Although in earlier studies the KSC-CBS laboratories have incorporated recycling of inedible plant material into their plant growth systems, all of these projects involved utilizing a liquid suspension bioreactor. The liquid suspension bioreactor, however, needs tissue drying and grinding and daily adjustments to the bioreactor system. Composting might be a preferred method in CBS as it can utilize fresh biomass with little preprocessing. Composting is a less labor consuming solution, although the degradation process takes longer. Since CBS utilizes hydroponics nutrient film technique, composted material will be soaked in water to recover the nutrients and then just the liquid will be returned to the plants. Using a small-scale growth system, students will incorporate compost leachate into the nutrient solution used by radishes.
 
ECOLOGICAL PROGRAMS 
Environmental monitoring and research has been conducted at KSC since the early 1970's. The Ecological Program (EP) is responsible for developing information necessary to define and predict environmental impacts that may result from human activities at KSC. The Ecological Program utilizes a pro-active, long-term multidisciplinary approach encompassing all aspects of the environment in order to determine the effects of operations and construction at KSC. Both event and long-term monitoring activities are implemented to support these requirements. Event monitoring includes assessments of the effects of space shuttle launches and other point source emissions. Long-term monitoring is the study of environmental impacts that result from the cumulative effects of NASA/KSC activities. Some of the monitoring activities that the ecological program participates in are air quality, precipitation and particulate sampling, surface and ground water quality, soil and sediment chemistry, flora and fauna assessments, fire ecology, threatened and endangered species population studies and wildlife habitat management.
 
Information management and analytical capabilities in the Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) Laboratory represent the foundation of the Ecological Program. Remote sensing from aircraft and satellites represents a unique tool for long-term environmental monitoring and ecological research. Change detection over time allows for definition and documentation of man-made and natural alterations in the landscape. Global Positional System data can be directly input into a GIS system for mapping and environmental monitoring purposes.
 
SLSTP students working within the Ecological Program may work in one of the following areas: air quality, aquatics, GIS, habitat assessment or vegetation. Research areas for air quality include precipitation, particulate sampling, and biogenic emissions. Aquatics monitors water quality, manatees, horseshoe crabs, and sea turtle biology and seagrass distribution. The GIS group gathers remote sensing imagery and manages research data. The habitat assessment group conducts research on threatened species such as Florida scrub-jays, Eastern indigo snakes, gopher tortoises, and the Southeastern beach mouse and is also involved in fire ecology studies. The vegetation studies group is involved in studies of fire ecology, scrub habitat restoration, landscape history and dynamics, and physiological ecology.
 
FLIGHT ENGINEERING & MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 
All aspects of biological spaceflight experiments at the KSC are primarily supported by several groups of the Life Science Support Contract (LSSC) including the following: Flight Experiments Management, Hardware Engineering, and Mission Operations. These teams generally develop, manage, and process payload hardware to support NASA-funded scientific experiments. SLSTP students working within the Flight Emphasis Group may work with scientists and engineers on projects associated with the supporting spaceflight experimentation.
 
The Flight Experiments Management Group works with scientists who have experiments designated for flight experiment on the Space Shuttle or International Space Station. The group interacts with Shuttle operations teams, mission management, safety personnel, and is responsible for training the astronaut crew to perform in-flight activities for KSC-managed experiments.
 
The Hardware Engineering Group translates experiment requirements into a suite of hardware capable of meeting those requirements. Engineers in this group design build and test this new hardware. This includes hardware performance testing and several different types of verification tests.
 
The Mission Ops team ensures that all ground processing of experiments at KSC go smoothly, before and after the Shuttle mission. The group maintains a world-class animal husbandry facility and can provide qualified husbandry services for any type of biological specimen - crickets, rats, mice, fish, frogs, flies, snails, mushrooms, bacteria and a variety of plant types have all passed through Mission Ops in the recent past. The team is ready to support launch and landing slips at a moment's notice and maintains the back-up shuttle landing facilities at Edwards Air Force Base. Members of the Mission Ops group often assist visiting researchers to optimize laboratory conditions at KSC. Operational research done by the Med Ops group is generally related to human health in space and upon return to the earth. This includes evaluating the shuttle water supplies for contamination before and after flight, monitoring the cleanliness of spaceflight hardware processing areas, and assessing new remote sensing technologies for space medicine applications.

SLSTP Program Characteristics
SLSTP is a Traineeship and not an internship. Below is a chart showing the differences.
 

	Internship	Traineeship
Goals	Set according to the research project of PI	Set according to program goals & participants
Time	40 hrs per week	40 hrs per week
Financial	Salary provided	Scholarships & Financial Assistance available
Travel & Accommodations
Work Experience
Professional Development
Networking
Mentorship
One-On-One Interaction