A conversation with Kevin Sato, the Project Scientist and Deputy Project Manager of NASA’s Space Biology research projects.

Transcript

Host (Matthew Buffington):You are listening to NASA in Silicon Valley, Episode 68. Frank, tell us about our guest today.

Frank Tavares:Hey, Matt! Today, we’re talking with Kevin Sato, the Project Scientist and Deputy Project Manager of NASA’s Space Biology research projects. So, space biology is basically figuring out how humans can live in space, on Mars, on the Moon, wherever we end up going. And Kevin not only works on some of these individual experiments, but also looks at the big picture of developing a portfolio, picking what experiments go when, and basically planning all of that out for the future.

Host:And all of this is very relevant now, as we’re getting ready for, towards the end of this month, for SpaceX 13, where we’ll be launching up to the International Space Station, of which they’ll be several Ames payload, and science experiments.

Frank Tavares:Yeah, definitely! And Rodent Research is something that Kevin’s worked on in the past, and Rodent Research 6 is one of the science experiments that will be going up to the space station again. Again, looking at, you know, how life changes when it’s put into space.

Host:So on a similar note, we are a NASA podcast but we are not the only NASA podcast! And our friends over at the Johnson Space Center have a podcast called Houston We Have a Podcast. We’re actually, as a special treat, going to be doing a joint episode with those guys next week, where we’ll be talking about SpaceX 13 and some of this work.

Frank Tavares:Yeah, and the really exciting thing about that is we’ll actually have an astronaut calling in, so we’ll be able to get two ends of the spectrum, both the astronauts that are on the space station actually doing these experiments, and some of the scientists that are developing those experiments, so we’re getting both perspectives.

Host:And so as a special shout out, also from NASA’s Headquarters, they’re going to be launching a new podcast this very week, called Gravity Assist, that is going to be run by our director of planetary scientist, the famous Dr. Jim Green, is basically giving a virtual tour of the solar system and beyond, starting out with the Sun, building all the way up into 10 episodes, that’ll end in Pluto. But before we jump into our episode, a reminder, we have a phone number, (650) 604-1400. Any questions, comments, go ahead and give us a call, and leave a message for us, and we can figure out how to add that into the podcast. But for those of you who want to be on social media, we’re using the hashtag #NASASiliconValley. But for today…

Frank Tavares:… Let’s hear from Kevin Sato.

[Music]

Matthew Buffington: We always start it off the same. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What brought you to — ? How did you join NASA? How did you end up in Silicon Valley?

Kevin Sato: Actually, I didn’t end up in Silicon Valley. I grew up in the Silicon Valley.

Host: That happens.

Kevin Sato: Yep. I grew up in Mountain View.

Host: Really?

Kevin Sato: Went to Castro Elementary School, Graham Middle School, and Los Altos High School. So, I know this area and I know this base.

Host: That’s so rare in this area with having the Google headquarters next door, Facebook headquarters. It’s like this tech boom in this area. It’s kind of rare you find people who are natives.

Kevin Sato: Yeah. No, I remember when the Bay Area was actually a large number of orchards.

Host: Yeah.

Kevin Sato:The actual part related to the silicon part. The semiconductor industry was just getting started. And so, it’s been really a treat to see how the Bay Area has grown up from one type of technology through to the next generation.

Host: Wow. Yeah, a while back we had an episode with Jack Boyd where he was telling about the history of the place. I know a big part about putting an NACA, now NASA, center in this area was also taking advantage of you have Stanford, you have all these universities, you have companies. It’s like this was just like a very fertile ground. So, I’d imagine growing up in this area, it just seemed such a natural flow to end up working over in NASA.

Kevin Sato: Yeah, it is. I was lucky enough, or old enough, to actually be able to remember back to Apollo. In fact, one of the first things I remember about NASA was being at my grandmother’s house one Sunday for dinner and we all went outside. My dad and uncle somehow knew Gemini — don’t remember which mission — was actually going to fly over. And so, we looked up and we saw Gemini come right over us. That was the first thing. But I remember all the Apollo missions.

But actually, my coming to work for NASA, which is something I thought would never, ever happen, was actually very accidental. I was completing my postdoctoral fellowship. And there was an opening that I was called in for to actually work with the NASA Flight Payloads group at that time.

And so, it was a complete shift where I would no longer be doing research, but actually working with principal investigators to translate their dreams and their goals for their scientific research into ones that they can actually conduct into space to understand the usual: how does life respond to space.

But a lot of the scientists were also interested in not necessarily just exploration. They were really interested in using the space environment to understand how a particular disease state occurred, and then turn that back into understanding how we might be able to solve that on Earth.

Host: I always get a kick out of, especially taking to anybody who’s working on payloads, that mix of science, research, scientific method, hypotheses, running experiments, but also the engineering side of building a thing that can survive a launch, that can get up into the space station and do this. But in your own background, was it more science? Was it engineering, working on payloads? Or was it both? How did that even launch into working at NASA?

Kevin Sato: My background was straight science.

Host: Okay.

Kevin Sato:It was straight fundamental research. I was focused in the areas of human cancer, human molecular biology and development of the cancer and how cells divide. And so, when it came to moving to the NASA side, it was very much no longer that specific area where you’re focusing. You were really utilizing everything you had learned as a scientist, because now you weren’t just looking at one thing. You had to be able to understand the science in many different areas, a drosophila focus, cell, rodent, C. elegans, just microbiology. A lot of different areas.

So, it was really interesting because I was now pulling on all of my experience and education in order to work with the investigators. But the really interesting thing was the folks that I worked with, especially the engineers and the operational people, because they were very helpful in really learning what they did, but learning their language. Because I think something people don’t think about is, “It’s science. He can talk science.” But in a lot of ways, when you move from one type of area of research or method into different areas, you’re actually learning to speak differently.

You’re learning, in a lot of ways, a new language and a new way to communicate and being able to say, “Here’s what the science needs to engineer so they understand how to implement it. Here’s what science needs, so the operational folks need it. And then here’s how we justify it so people in business, in management, can understand what’s needed.” And so, that’s been the interesting part about my career here is that you’re forever growing and learning, and learning new ways to communicate as I’ve been moving through the different areas that I’ve been involved in.

Host: And so starting off, it was payloads from the beginning or helping people design those experiments?

Kevin Sato: Right. It was science operations. Basically, there are a series of phases that we go though. First phase was taking an investigation, translating that into a flight capable investigation through defining the requirements of that investigation.

For example, a principal investigator wanted to be able to study how quail developed in space. Now you have to say, “Okay, how do we translate that into set of requirements that engineers can understand to develop the hardware [they need]?” So, they said, “Okay, the quail needed to get air of this amount. They need to be able to develop. Like with anything, the eggs need to be turned periodically.”

Host: Yeah.

Kevin Sato: “They need a certain temperature.” So, you’re looking at all these particular perspectives of the investigation and turning it into rather than “I need to do this study,” like you would in a lab, to specific defined specifications that anyone can look at and go, “Okay, I know what you need so that I can run it operationally as well as engineering wise.” That was a real large difference, because you don’t think in those terms necessarily as a scientist. You do subconsciously, but you never have to really put it down on paper and tell someone else.

Host: I imagine as a researcher, as a scientist, you have a lab, you probably have a little bit more freedom of like, “Okay, here’s my hypothesis. This is what I’m looking at.” Design the experiment, run the experiment, control groups. You do the whole rigmarole. But there’s only so much stuff that can go to the space station, and it takes a lot of effort and a lot of money to get something up on the space station.

So, I’d imagine it’s just like — I don’t know. I’m just making this up. You can tell me if I’m wrong — I’m thinking of a funnel of people propose a lot of ideas, a lot of investigations, a lot of theories, and then that slowly gets whittled down to, “Okay, what’s an actual real experience and how can we actually put it up?” Is that kind of how it works, to narrow down who wins and goes up to the space station?

Kevin Sato: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The way it works is NASA puts out regular what’s called NASA research announcements, their solicitations. For flight investigations, they go through basically three series of reviews. The first one is a peer review.

Scientists from the scientific community come in. They review all of the grants for scientific merit. Is it worth doing? Is it addressing a question that’s worth asking? And is the science that is being conducted of high merit and worth us funding? Once those receive a passing score, they then get passed on to the different centers who have the expertise, and we look at them for now technical feasibility.

Host: Okay.

Kevin Sato: Exactly as you said. Can you actually conduct this experiment in space? Can we actually turn this into a flight experiment within the constraints, the requirements, and capabilities we have available? Then once they receive a score for that, it’s combined with the main peer review score.

Then we look at it at the headquarters levels in terms of programmatics and funding. Do we have the funding for how many can we support? Programmatically, does it actually fit what we’re interested in and our objectives for exploration: standard fundamental knowledge advancement?

Once all of those are considered, then the final whittling goes down, as you said, to funnel where a certain select few are then recommended to, in our case, the space life and physical sciences research and applications director for his approval to fund those particular investigations. Once that’s done, the principal investigators are notified.

Then for us at the center, when I was doing flight payloads, the fun begins. Because then we meet the PIs, we learn about what they’re doing, and we now take the first steps to defining their experiment requirements in terms of flight investigation. And then we go from there.

Host: In the role that you’re working in even now, it’s like you’re not just working on one experiment and one thing. You’re looking at a whole suite, like the whole of the program, all these different experiments and different things.

Kevin Sato: Yes. Now I’m working more on the programmatic side with the strategic and tactical planning, but also looking across our entire portfolio of investigations to identify which experiments we want to fly in which priority orders based on what we know is currently the programmatic needs not just for NASA Space Biology, but also for the human research project. Possibly also with respect to commercial and other areas. But primarily, what do we need to understand and know in order to safely fly humans to the moon and to Mars again. And so, that’s why I work across all the portfolios.

Then we then hand those to the various implementation groups or our, definitionally speaking, that study. I’m still doing definition work and working with PIs, but less so. We have a group of really great people who are portfolio leads, and also our mission scientists who are now the next generation of folks who are taking experiments out to space.

Host: Early on in the podcast, we’d spoke with David Smith who’s in the space bioscience group, and also Elizabeth Pane on some of the working on payloads and different things. Basically, your day-to-day is working with these people, understanding these experiments, and getting them all lined up to become a reality.

I know one of the big competencies, one of the big things that Ames does, is focusing on space biology. So, talk a little bit about that. I love the catchphrase of the International Space Station of working off the earth for the earth. Why is it important to have space biology or space biosciences? What are we looking for? What we trying to understand?

Kevin Sato: Right, so space biology is actually a very unique field of study. I think most people when they think about research, you’re doing it in gravity, you’re doing it in 1G on earth, and you’re doing it in an environment that you can control that basically life evolved in.

Now when you leave earth, all of those norms that you understand biology to function by, all of the norms that you do research by, change completely. For example, if you go into orbit, you’re basically in freefall, you’re in microgravity, and life biology changes. You see changes where you no longer have the standard gradient of fluid pressure, for example, on the body from the head to the feet. All that begins to equalize out. Mechanical stimulations that we get from walking or moving are reduced or eliminated.

And so, you need to start to think in terms of what is going on in the absence of the gravity. But also, the science itself is also thinking about “If I’m going to conduct this research in space, why do I need to conduct it there? What can spaceflight, that environment, tell me that I cannot do on earth?” There are a lot of things. For example, there are potential disease syndromes such as I think everyone understands osteoporosis.

Host: Okay. Yeah, like bone density.

Kevin Sato: Bone density, correct. On earth, that takes years and years, almost a lifetime, to occur. To study that over someone’s lifetime means that 80, 90 years before you get any understanding. However, it’s known that when astronauts go into space, and we’ve seen this in rodents, there’s an almost immediate start in loss of bone.

Host: Really?

Kevin Sato: Yes. And so the idea, the understanding, is that there’s somehow a disconnect between how bone is degraded and bone is formed. On earth, there’s a homeostasis, meaning there’s a static change with how you lose bone and gain bone, because you remodel your bone throughout your life.

In spaceflight, as in osteoporosis, there’s a disconnect between the bone loss and the stimuli to stimulate the cells that will come in and form bone. That’s no longer there. So, you get more accumulative bone loss than you do bone formation. And that’s what could give an osteo product like state in bones in astronauts and rodents.

One of the questions that’s out there is does this particular state really describe what happens in the disease state on Earth. There’s a lot of indications that, yes, that’s true. But it’s an area that’s of very high and strong research that we at Ames are actually very, very much involved in.

We have scientists finding major breakthroughs in how it might be occurring at a mechanistic level, and also how we may be able to identify some countermeasures that may stop that particular state.

Host: Yeah, I think naturally when you think about these biology experiments in space, “Biology in Space,” naturally you tend to think of on going to Mars, humans going to the moon, living long term out in space, how that affects you. There’s a natural connect to that. But there’s also a lot of pharmaceutical industries. There’s other things that you can learn that can help us living on earth that aren’t necessarily related towards the journey to Mars. But it’s just like things that you can learn about how microgravity affects biology that can help us out here.

Kevin Sato: Yeah, and that’s key, I think. Although a while ago, there was actually an NIH, National Institutes of Health, call for research investigations that required the use of the spaceflight environment in order to address specific disease questions on earth. One of the investigators who was one of the payload specialist astronauts years ago on the space shuttle and is studying aging — because there’s a lot of aging analogs that occur — had identified that T cells, which are an important part of your immune system that activate cells that produce the B cells that produce antibodies, weren’t stimulated to become activated so they can do that work. And so, that was actually funded by the National Institutes of Health.

There are companies who are actually using the space environment because of the acceleration in possible analog disease states in space in order to actually investigate possible countermeasure drugs, that they can see whether it works or not. And based on that, they can either come back and say, “Hey, let’s go look at this further. This compound looks like one that we might be able to use for further drug testing.” Or the idea ultimately is the ability to maybe use the space environment to validate drugs.

Now it’s a little harder because you have a limited number of specimens you can study. But I think the key is the fact that, as I mentioned with osteoporosis, there are certain physical states, physiological states, in the human body, or the animal, or in other model organisms like drosophila, C. elegans, and especially bacteria where you’re seeing changes occur at a much more rapid rate that you can actually analyze within a certain shorter period of time and get really good research data that we may be able to base some commercial basis for a drug, identification of a countermeasure, or potential therapeutic target.

Host: Wow. I remember the last time when we were hanging out and talking. I think we were talking about some of the rodent research stuff. You were talking about how some of the new upcoming experiments of it’s not only just like, hey, this is some of the stuff that NASA is working on to understand the journey to Mars, to understand how this knowledge can benefit us here on earth. But also going into how the teams are formatted and how the teams can work together and different things that you guys have learned about. Go ahead and talk a little bit about some of that stuff.

Kevin Sato: Yeah. Everything we do here at NASA, which is, I think, one of the most exciting things we do, is we work in teams. We work in teams that have different specializations. We have scientists. We have people who know operations. These are all the guys that make things happen for us, for a scientist. We have engineers. We have people who are business, project managers. We have PAO, education.

Host: Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Sato: We work in teams. It’s that interaction of the teams that make the science happen. In the case of the rodent research. There’s a lot of different things that have to happen for a rodent research experiment. There’s the identification of the science and what the requirements are that the scientists do, as well as working with our flight internal animal care and use committee in order to understand how we work with the animals to make sure it’s done in a humane and ethical manner. Because the animals are very important for research, they always have been, and we look at them as partners in understanding in our trip to Mars.

Once those are done, it gets handed off to our engineers and ops people to be able to then take that and translate it into an actual flight. What hardware do we need? What kits do we need to bring up in order to support the animals? What operational needs do we have in order to change out food, change out the water supply system, send them up, bring them back? But on top of that, where you see the integration of work within a project and within a specific flight, there’s also the interplay that occurs between flights. Because as you’re working on one investigation, you’re starting to work on another or you’re finishing another.

Host: This is layered. Yeah.

Kevin Sato: It’s just layered. Yeah. And it’s like that for any investigations we do for flight payloads for any model organism. That’s one of the larger challenges, making sure that the teams are able to work in a manner where they complete one and start another or begin another while they’re beginning to work and deal with one study that they’re already doing. And so, it’s a very dynamic environment, and it’s one in which it’s very exciting because you’re constantly learning something new, you’re constantly doing something different, or you’re constantly learning something that you did the last time that you changed and all of a sudden there’s an improvement.

But on the bottom line that I think we get as a team, and the greatest kick we get, is when a scientific investigator comes back and says, “Hey, I can address all my objective’s specific aims. I can do my research. And I really want to thank you.” That’s really rewarding. Because what you end up feeling, even though you’re not doing the science, is the fact that you’ve enabled something to occur that is going to benefit space exploration and potentially earth and humans in general.

Host: That’s a really cool thing I’ve enjoyed and thing that I’ve loved about talking with people during the podcast is also it really takes all different types to make this place run. It’s also good because there’s so many people who watched Star Wars as kids or watched SpaceCamp or Star Trek, or people who are inspired by the stuff, and they’re like “Love NASA.” But maybe math is not their thing, or maybe writing isn’t their thing, or business classes.

It’s like no matter what your area of interest is, there’s a role to play. It’s when you take these smart people no matter what they’re doing, no matter what their skillset or what they’re working on, being science, engineering, technology. Or if it’s mission support, business cases, logistics, human resources. It all matches together. And by everybody working together, that synergy, you come up with something greater than the sum of its parts.

Kevin Sato: Absolutely. The neat thing is that everyone is so excited about making things happen. These are folks that go over the top. They go beyond expectations because they know that the benefits to gain are great. The other thing, too, that’s neat is we don’t just work within Ames, and you fly. We’re actually working with other centers. There are the group at Johnson Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, Kennedy, Glenn. All of us are working together to fly a particular investigator or fly a series of experiments.

One of the greatest things is you can talk to folks who think “They’re so far away from what we’re doing, but they’re trying to help us.” And they come back and say, “You’re doing this. You need this. You have to have this.” Or they’re asking us questions that are actually [unintelligible] think of, “I didn’t think about that.” They understand it. Then when it goes to flight, they’re right there. They’re our advocates. They’re fighting to get everything we need to get our experiments conducted in space and completed.

It’s just really amazing when they talk about NASA as a family and NASA as a team regardless of what center you’re at. Everyone is working together for one goal, and that’s to get exploration up. That goal includes making sure that the science, the engineering, whatever we need to do, is being accomplished at those levels to make that happen. It’s a really neat environment to see that. It really is that large a family.

Host: Excellent. For folks who are listening to the podcast, anybody who has questions for Kevin, want to hit us up. We are on Twitter @NASAAmes. We’re using the hashtag #NASASiliconValley. If folks have questions, they can come on over, hit you up on Twitter, and we’ll get back to you and we’ll go back and forth. But considering the work for the space station is an ongoing thing, this isn’t going to be the last time that we talk to you and your team. Thanks so much for coming on over.

Kevin Sato: Thank you very much. I appreciate you giving the opportunity to talk a little about what I do and what we do as NASA on flight payloads to help us get along with the exploration out to Mars and beyond low earth orbit.

Host: Excellent. Talk to you later.

Kevin Sato: Thank you.

[END]