A Researcher’s Guide to: Microgravity Materials Research

June 2025 Edition

Most materials are formed from a partially or totally fluid sample, and the transport of heat and mass from the fluid into the solid during solidification inherently influences the formation of the material and its resultant properties. The ISS provides a long-duration microgravity environment for conducting experiments that enables researchers to examine the effects of heat and mass transport on materials processes in the near-absence of gravity-driven forces. The microgravity environment greatly reduces buoyancy-driven convection, hydrostatic pressure, and sedimentation. It can also be advantageous for designing experiments with reduced container interactions. The reduction in these gravity-related sources of heat and mass transport may be taken advantage of to determine how material processes and microstructure formation are affected by gravity-driven and gravity independent sources of heat and mass transfer. 

Materials science experiments on the ISS have yielded broad and significant scientific advancements, including contributing to the development of improved mathematical models for predicting material properties during processing on Earth and enabling a better understanding of microstructure formation during solidification towards controlling the material properties of various alloys. 

This researcher’s guide provides information on the acceleration environment of the space station and describes facilities available for materials research. Examples of previous microgravity materials research and descriptions of planned research are also provided.

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Ana Guzman

NASA’s Lunar Rescue System Challenge Supports Astronaut Safety

by Dary Felix Garcia

NASA is preparing to make history by sending humans to the Moon’s South Pole. There, astronauts will conduct moonwalks for exploration, science experiments, and prepare humanity for the journey to Mars. Missions of this scale require extensive planning, especially when accounting for emergency scenarios such as a crew member becoming incapacitated.  

To address this critical risk, the South Pole Safety Challenge invited the public to develop a compact, effective device capable of safely rescuing astronauts during emergency situations on the Moon’s surface. Given the harsh and unpredictable conditions of the lunar South Pole, the rescue system must be lightweight, easy to use, and able to transport an incapacitated crew member weighing approximately 755 lbs. (343 kg), representing the crew member and their suit, without the help of the lunar rover. It must also be capable of covering up to 1.24 miles (2 kilometers) across slopes as steep as 20 degrees. 

“The initiative saved the government an estimated $1,000,000 and more than three  years of work had the solutions been produced using in-house existing resources,” said Ryon Stewart, acting Program Manager of NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation. “The effort demonstrated how crowdsourcing provides NASA with a wide diversity of innovative ideas and skills.”

The global challenge received 385 unique ideas from 61 countries. Five standout solutions received a share of the $45,000 prize purse.  Each of the selected solutions demonstrated creativity, practicality, and direct relevance to NASA’s needs for future Moon missions.

The global challenge received 385 unique ideas from 61 countries. Five standout solutions received a share of the $45,000 prize purse.  Each of the selected solutions demonstrated creativity, practicality, and direct relevance to NASA’s needs for future Moon missions.  

• First Place: VERTEX by Hugo Shelley – A self-deploying four-wheeled motorized stretcher that converts from a compact cylinder into a frame that securely encases an immobilized crew member for transport up to 6.2 miles (10 kilometers).  

• Second Place: MoonWheel by Chamara Mahesh – A foldable manual trolley designed for challenging terrain and rapid deployment by an individual astronaut.  

• Third Place: Portable Foldable Compact Emergency Stretcher by Sbarellati team – A foldable stretcher compatible with NASA’s Exploration Extravehicular Activity spacesuit. 

• Third Place: Advanced Surface Transport for Rescue (ASTRA) by Pierre-Alexandre Aubé – A collapsible three-wheeled device with a 1.2 mile (2 kilometer) range.
• Third Place: Getting Rick to Roll! by InventorParents – A rapidly deployable, tool-free design suited for functionality in low gravity settings. 

NASA is identifying how to integrate some features of the winning ideas into current and future mission designs. Most intriguing are the collapsible concepts of many of the designs that would save crucial mass and volume. Additionally, the submissions offered innovative wheel designs to enhance current concepts. NASA expects to incorporate some features into planning for surface operations of the Moon. 

HeroX hosted the challenge on behalf of NASA’s Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program. The NASA Tournament Lab, part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program in the Space Technology Mission Directorate, managed the challenge. The program supports global public competitions and crowdsourcing as tools to advance NASA research and development and other mission needs.   

Find more opportunities at https://www.nasa.gov/get-involved/ 

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Sarah Douglas

Driven by a Dream: Farah Al Fulfulee’s Quest to Reach the Stars

Farah Al Fulfulee was just four years old when she started climbing onto the roof of her family’s house in Iraq to gaze at the stars.

“It scared me how vast and quiet the sky was, but it made me very curious. I grew a deep passion for the stars and constellations and what they might represent,” she said.

Her father noticed her interest and began bringing home books and magazines about space. Al Fulfulee first read about NASA in those pages and was fascinated by the agency’s mission to explore the cosmos for the benefit of all humanity.

“Right then I knew I had to be an astronaut! I must go to space myself and get a closer look,” she said. “I knew I must find a way to go and work for NASA and fulfill my dream, working with other people like me who had a passion to explore the universe.”

As a girl growing up in the Middle East, Al Fulfulee had few opportunities to pursue this dream, but she refused to give up. Her dedication to schoolwork and excellence in science and math earned her a spot at the University of Baghdad College of Engineering. She completed a degree in electronic and communication engineering — similar to American electrical and computer engineering programs — and graduated as one of the top 10 students in her class. “We had a graduation party where you dress up as what you want to be in the future,” she recalled. “I wore a spacesuit.”

Al Fulfulee was ready to launch her career, but Iraq did not have a developed space industry and finding work as a female engineer was a challenge. She accepted a project engineer position with a prominent Iraqi engineering firm in the information technology sector and spent four years working for the company in Iraq, Turkey, and Jordan, but she was disappointed to discover that her role involved very little engineering. “I was the only female on the team,” she said. “It was not common for a woman to work in the field or with customers, so I was always left behind to do office work. The job was not fulfilling.”

Still determined to join NASA, Al Fulfulee kept looking for her chance to come to the United States and finally found one in 2016, when she moved to Oklahoma to be near her sister. A new challenge soon rose: Without a degree from an American school or previous work experience in the United States, engineering opportunities were hard to come by. Al Fulfulee spent the next six years working in quality assurance for a human resources software company while she completed a MicroMasters program in software verification and management from the University of Maryland and honed her English and leadership skills.

Her big break came in 2022, when she landed a job with Boeing Defense, Space, and Security as a software quality engineer. “I was so excited,” she said. “I knew I was much closer to my dream since Boeing worked in the space industry and I would be able to apply internally to work on a space program.”

Less than one year later, Al Fulfulee became a system design and analysis engineer for the International Space Station Program and joined the Station Management and Control Team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. She helps develop requirements, monitors performance, and validates testing for electrical systems and software supporting space station payloads. She also designs hardware, software, and interface specifications for those systems. Al Fulfulee has served as the team’s point of contact, delivering verification assessment and data assessment reports for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 and Crew-10 missions, as well as the upcoming Axiom Mission 4 flight. She is currently working to support testing and verification for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11.

“I could not be happier,” she declared.

She is also not stopping. “I won’t quit until I wear the blue suit.”

Al Fulfulee has been an enthusiastic volunteer for various NASA studies, including the Exploration Atmosphere Studies that tested spacewalk safety protocols in an analog environment. She is pursuing a master’s degree in Space Operations Engineering from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is an avid gardener and learning how to grow produce indoors as a volunteer experimental botanist with the Backyard Produce Project, noting that such knowledge might come in handy on Mars.

She is also helping to inspire the next generation. Earlier this year, Al Fulfulee was a guest speaker at the Women in Tech & Business Summit in Iraq – an event designed to encourage Iraqi women to pursue technology careers. “I was the only person representing women in space,” she said. “It was a really moving experience.” Al Fulfulee provided practical advice on breaking barriers in aerospace and shared her story with the crowd.

“I know my path is long and across the continents,” she said, “but I am enjoying my journey.”

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Linda E. Grimm

Explore Our Dynamic Sun!

from NASA’s Heliophysics Education Activation Team (NASA HEAT) and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific/Night Sky Network

Have you ever wondered about what the Sun is made of? Or why do you get sunburned on even cloudy days? NASA’s new Explore the Sun toolkit brings the wonders of solar science to you, offering answers to these questions and more!

A collaboration between NASA’s Heliophysics Education Activation Team (NASA HEAT) and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s Night Sky Network program, this resource was developed for informal educators, amateur astronomers, and astronomy enthusiasts alike, providing engaging activities for anyone eager to learn more about our nearest star.

Whether you’re hosting a solar viewing event or an indoor presentation, the Our Dynamic Sun toolkit provides easy-to-use materials designed to spark curiosity. Each card in the set pairs NASA images with clear explanations for each topic:

• “What color is the Sun?” (hint: it’s not yellow!)
• “How does the Sun affect us here on Earth?”
• “When will the Sun die?”

These cards not only answer common questions the public may have, but also highlight how NASA’s solar research helps us understand space weather, solar storms, and their impacts on our daily lives.

Bring the Sun’s story to your community and inspire the next generation of explorers. You can download this free Our Dynamic Sun toolkit here: https://bit.ly/suntoolkit

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NASA Employees Named 2025 Service to America Medals Honorees

Two NASA employees are being  honored as part of the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals, also known as the Sammies, recognizing outstanding federal employees who are addressing many of our country’s greatest challenges.

Rich Burns of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and John Blevins of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, were selected out of 350 nominees and are among 23 individuals and teams honored for their achievements as federal employees. They will be recognized at a ceremony in Washington on Tuesday, June 17, that also will be live streamed on the Sammies website. The honorees will be commended via videos and presenter remarks and receive medals for their achievements.

Named after the founder of the Partnership for Public Service, the 2025 Service to America Medals awards celebrate federal employees who provided critical public services and made outstanding contributions to the health, safety, and national security of our country.

“Rich and John exemplify the spirit of exploration and service that defines NASA and our nation’s civil servants,” said acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro. “Their leadership, ingenuity, and dedication have not only advanced America’s space program but also inspired the next generation of innovators. We are proud to see their achievements recognized among the very best of federal service.”

Burns was the project manager of the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission to collect a sample from an asteroid and oversaw operations from the developmental stage to the successful landing of the spacecraft’s Sample Return Capsule.

The mission launched on Sept. 18, 2016, and after a nearly four-year journey, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully collected a sample from the asteroid Bennu on Oct. 20, 2020, which returned to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, providing scientists with 120 grams of pristine material to study, the largest amount ever collected from an asteroid. Working to solidify OSIRIS-REx as a success, Burns set up multiple partnerships and communicated frequently with scientists, large and small businesses, NASA centers, and others to ensure the mission’s vision was carried out though each phase.

During the mission, Burns had to handle unique challenges that required adapting to new situations. These included improving flight software to help the spacecraft avoid hazardous parts of Bennu’s rocky surface and working with NASA leaders to find a way to best protect the sample collected from Bennu after a large stone propped the collection canister open. Finally, when the sample was set to return to Earth, Burns worked extensively with NASA and military partners to prepare for the landing, focusing on the safety of the public along with the integrity of the sample to ensure the final part of the mission was a success.

Burns helped OSIRIS-REx exceed its objectives all while under the original budget, allowing  NASA to share a portion of the sample with more than 80 research projects and make new discoveries about the possible origins of life on our planet. The spacecraft, now known as Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Apophis Explorer, is scheduled to rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis in 2029.

“It’s humbling to accept an award based on the achievements of the amazingly talented, dedicated, and innovative OSIRIS-REx team,” Burns said. “I consider myself privileged to be counted among a team of true explorers who let no obstacle stand in the way of discovery.”

Blevins is the chief engineer for the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and is responsible for the various technical decisions that need to be made to ensure each mission is successful. This included calculating structural needs, thermal analyses of the effects, and studies of vibrations, acoustics, propulsion integration, among other work.

Artemis I, the first test flight of the SLS rocket, successfully launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 16, 2022. In the time leading up to and during launch, Blevins led the team integrating the hardware for the mission working  to address unexpected events while SLS was on the pad prior to launch. This included significant lightning storms and two hurricanes impacting Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Blevins built a working coalition of engineering teams across the agency that previously did not exist. His ability to forge strong relationships on the various teams across the agency allowed for the successful launch of Artemis I. He continues to lead the engineering team behind SLS as they prepare for Artemis II, the second flight of SLS and the first crewed lunar mission of the 21st century.

“This is a reflection on the hard work and dedication of the entire Artemis Team,” Blevins said. “I am working with an incredibly competent, dedicated team agencywide that goes above and beyond to promote the space exploration goals of our nation. I am honored to accept the award on their behalf.”

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Tiernan P. Doyle