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>> Houston Station on "Space to Ground".
>> Josh Byerly: Welcome to "Space to Ground".
I'm Josh Byerly.
The Space Station crew has been busy this week unloading a lot
of the cargo that was delivered aboard Orbital Sciences' Cygnus.
The vehicle, carrying more than a ton of supplies,
arrived this past weekend and will be unloaded
over the next couple of weeks.
The crew will then start packing Cygnus full
of stuff they no longer need.
The vehicle will depart the Station on February 18th
and head toward a destructive re-entry in Earth's atmosphere.
One of the experiments that was on the Orbital flight looks
at how bacteria grow in space.
We've learned that bacteria grow like crazy in microgravity,
to the point that it's difficult to combat them with antibiotics.
The Antibiotic Effectiveness in Space #1 experiment,
or AES-1, looks at why these microorganisms are so resistant.
What is it about being up there that allows them to grow
so well, and how can we figure out how
to fight this growth both in space and here on Earth.
Another piece of science flown
on Cygnus called SPHERES-Slosh actually looks
at rocket fuel.
As you can imagine, when rockets launch,
the fuel inside tends to slosh around.
The experiment will use the bowling ball-sized satellites
on board to figure out exactly how the sphere moves.
>> So this experiment is giving us all of the test data
that we're hoping to use to simulate what happens
to the propellant tanks on our vehicles.
>> Josh Byerly: This can not only lead
to better rocket design but also to better fuel efficiency
in our cars and trucks here on the ground.
@GeeksNGamers asked us, "What's the upload
and download speed in space right now?
Guessing fiber isn't an option?"
Well, considering the space station is 260 miles high
and traveling pretty fast, that would have
to be one long fiber cable.
So we use NASA's communication satellites, which are more
than 20,000 miles up in the sky.
There are actually several different ways we rely data,
but the highest rate is in the KU band system
with downlink speeds up to 300 megabytes per second.
Make sure you send us your questions
and comments using the hashtag #spacetoground.
See you next week.