SpaceX Dragon Delivers Groundbreaking Science and Solar Arrays to ISS - SciTechDaily

At 10:27 a.m. EDT, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the space-facing port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module, delivering more than 6,300 pounds of food, supplies, and equipment for the Expedition 75 crew. This is SpaceX’s 35th commercial resupply services mission to the space station for NASA. Aboard the Dragon spacecraft is the final set of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays, or IROSAs, which will be installed later this fall. The spacecraft also is delivering hardware to manufacture artificial retinas in microgravity to help restore vision on Earth and 3D heart tissue models to advance large‑scale drug testing on future missions. The spacecraft will carry materials to study how a new type of glass forms in microgravity and brain organoids that could reveal treatment targets for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis.

The sea cucumber study reveals an unusual form of tissue regrowth, with detached fragments continuing to heal, reorganize, and grow for more than three years in natural seawater. Credit: ShutterstockSea cucumber tissue kept growing for more than three years after removal, surviving in seawater teeming with microbes. Like Thing, the disembodied hand in The Addams Family, a severed piece of sea cucumber tissue kept living without the body it came from, prompting scientists to describe the animal as a “real-life zombie.” Weeks after being cut from a tube foot, the fragment appeared to be growing in seawater full of microbes, far from the sterile conditions usually needed to keep tissue cultures alive. Scientists at Memorial University of Newfoundland followed up by placing tissue removed from the feet, main body, and tentacles of three sea cucumbers in flowing seawater. The animals belonged to Psolus fabricii, a cold-water species. Working with collaborators including Rachel Sipler, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, the team documented what happened to those fragments in a study published in Science Advances.

Brought together by Trump’s funding cuts, Julia Van Etten and her rag tag team of biologists pursued their research in a motel room. And it was out of this makeshift lab that they made an incredible discovery: two new microscopic organisms that may be crucial to tracing the origins of life, the New York Times reports.