Why test things in space?
More science is headed to the International Space Station after SpaceX’s supply launch from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday. The astronauts aboard the station will conduct hundreds of research projects and science experiments.
From cancer studies and Parkinson’s disease research to looking at how spaceflight affects the human body, the science will help future NASA missions in space and provide medical research for us here on Earth.
Patrick O’Neill, the International Space Station National Laboratory’s Public Affairs and Outreach Lead, said that testing some of these projects, experiments and research in space adds almost a 3D perspective to it.
“If you're able to take something and have an added dimension to it, a fourth dimension to it, would you not want to take advantage of that?” O’Neill asked. “Would you not want to see how things react differently? Are you able to take knowledge from how that's reacting differently and incorporate that back into your 3D model? To me, that's almost how you look at microgravity, where you have this variable that is completely different than what it is that you have in a normal laboratory setting, and now you have access to it continuously.”
However, not every experiment or payload can be sent to the space station. As O’Neill said, the International Space Station National Laboratory is selective in what becomes a payload to support the orbiting lab.
“You got to be able to find hardware that allows for this to happen,” O’Neill said. “Second of all, you have to have a scientific justification. You can't just fly something up to the space station for the sake of flying it. This is arguably the most expensive thing developed by humanity, and there is a high degree of stewardship that coincides with anything that goes to the orbiting laboratory. So, there's got to be that scientific merit, and then last but not least, what does that benefit by launching that into the space environment that we can have here on this planet?”
While it has to have that scientific merit, O’Neill said that doesn’t mean there aren’t any unique payloads.
“Adidas launched multiple projects to the space station over the years,” O’Neill said. “One of them was a spin dispersion study using their soccer ball, and insights from that spin dispersion study had been incorporated into the ball that was ultimately used during the World Cup.”
Margaret Hamilton, a pioneer of software engineering
Maragret Hamilton, a computer scientist who led MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program, died late last month.
Hamilton was 90 years old.
Her career storied career includes working on NASA’s Apollo 11 mission that put two astronauts on the moon for the very first time.
In addition to her contributions to the Apollo program, she worked at MIT for over a decade, has over 130 publications, founded two software engineering companies and has dozens of awards, including the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Emily Carney is a space historian and the co-author of ‘Star Bound: A Beginner’s Guide to the American Space Program, from Goddard’s Rockets to Goldilocks Planets and Everything in Between.’ She wrote about Hamilton on Substack: For the Love of God, Read the Woman’s Obituary.
Carney explained that Hamilton is well known from a photo from 1969 that pictures her with long hair and 60’s style glasses standing next to giant stacks of paper. Those stacks are all code for the Apollo missions.
“She and others in her field basically invented the term software engineering, which now is a huge industry,” Carney said. “They basically built that industry from the ground up. So, she was a huge pioneer, and she did a lot more than just work on Apollo. Her career started in the 50s.If you read about her on the MIT websites, she had her hands on a lot of projects.”
Just like in the photos, Hamilton and the rest of the pioneers wrote code for the missions by hand.
“It consisted of rope memory, and that's hard to explain, but basically, it was kind of written into the some of the cording going into the computers,” Carney said. “Because you didn't have a lot of you know storage back then…it was done by rope memory back in the day. But the process was a lot different. It was more difficult. Granted, there weren't as many lines of codes as there probably is a modern spacecraft, but they wrote all the code by hand.”
During the Apollo days, Carney said there weren’t many women in the space industry.
“To be a team lead at that time as a woman is like finding out the existence to me of like ‘yeah, there's unicorns’ you know something like that,” Carney said.” I mean, it's really just not very heard of. There were other women of that time. There just weren't many of them, which is why for better or for worse, they stick out because they're the only ones.”
Carney posted an obituary she wrote for Hamilton on the popular Facebook Group Space Hipsters, a community for all people and all things space related. In her post, she explained that the comments on her obituary were surprising.
“I feel like there was a lot of people threatened by her accomplishments,” Carney said. “What she did doesn't take away from what others did. I just feel like you see a lot of that attitude nowadays directed to women, not always just from men, other women do it too. Where they feel threatened that someone's getting positive attention, and they want to take it away from them.”
Now in 2026, Christina Koch became the first woman to travel to the moon. Carney believes that it wouldn’t come as a surprise to Hamilton as most people would think.
“I don't think someone like Margaret Hamilton and her colleagues would have thought it would have taken almost 60 years,” Carney said. “I think they would have been like, ‘Oh yeah, this is going to happen in the next few years, probably within the next 10 years or so.’ I don't think they would have thought you know progress was going to move that slow. Indeed, if you look at 1969, it took another 14 years for U.S. women to fly in space. That's a long time…there were a lot of very competent women, and there were women scientists in the 1960’s and 70’s who were more than I think qualified.”
