A Couple of NASA SCIENTISTS Husband and wife, Dr. David Bubenheim ’80, and Debra Reiss-Bubenheim ’81, are applying their backgrounds in plant science working for NASA. Dr. Bubenheim has had a chance to see his experiment with growing dwarf wheat applied on the Russian Space Station and ReissBubenheim, has trained astronauts and observed the impact of weightlessness on small organisms. They are both working in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley at NASA’s Ames Research Center, where they are taking on the challenges of sustaining life in space when teams can’t resupply and, developing ways for people to live more sustainably on Earth. Reiss-Bubenheim is an associate chief of the Space Biosciences Division and Dr. Bubenheim is a senior research scientist. They met in band as undergraduate students at Delaware Valley College when she was an ornamental horticulture and environmental design student and he was a horticulture student. “When you leave Delaware Valley College, you have a really broad education and you never know where that is going to take you,” said Reiss-Bubenheim. After DelVal, they went to Virginia Tech, where they each completed graduate degrees in horticulture. Dr. Bubenheim earned his Ph.D. through a NASA-funded program at Utah State University and then did a year of NASA-funded postdoctoral work at Purdue University, before taking a position at the Ames Research Center in 1987. Reiss-Bubenheim stayed at home for a year with their son before coming to work for the Center as well. When he first started, Dr. Bubenheim worked on life support systems; developing capabilities to use plants to purify air and water and produce food. Collaborating with the Russians on an experiment to grow dwarf wheat on the Russian Mir space station in the late ’90s is a milestone he thinks about often. “We were really trying to understand plant growth in the closed atmosphere of the spacecraft and the full life cycle,” said Dr. Bubenheim. “That was one science experiment of about 150 that the cosmonauts were working on; our stuff wasn’t listed very high, but the first thing they wanted to do in space was to look at the plants. It was green and you can imagine what it would be like to be cooped up in a tin can in space without fresh air for months.”
Astronaut Shannon Lucid is photographed looking at wheat growing in the Svet or greenhouse, in the Mir space station. Courtesy of NASA.
and nutrients. A clay substrate, which looked like kitty litter, helped keep water attached to the surface. One of the most exciting times for Reiss-Bubenheim was having crew members on the dedicated life sciences missions do experiments for her team in space. Her work looks at the effects of space travel on animals and plants and ways to improve the health of astronauts. “We investigate the effects of space on plants, bacteria, yeast, rodents, fruit flies, you name it,” said Reiss-Bubenheim, who helps manage the non-human biological payloads that fly up. For long-term space travel, the team is looking at how to produce crops in space. The team trains astronauts and works on hardware to house the astronauts and their plants. She’s watching synthetic biology closely and is interested to see how it can be applied in space for building habitats, shielding astronauts, or other needs.
The team had to design methods to deliver water to the roots, which helped them better understand how water moves in microgravity.
“In space you’re not going to be able to resupply,” said Reiss-Bubenheim. “You’re going to have to figure out how to live because you can’t take everything with you. We’re hoping that years from now this can be applied to help teams do that.”
The cosmonauts kept the dwarf wheat in a controlled environment box with lights at the top and a container at the bottom for water
Often people think of space first when NASA comes to mind, but a lot of the work at Ames has on-Earth applications.
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