Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

episode 150, Technology versus Space. I'm Gary Jordan and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast, we bring in the experts,

scientists, engineers, astronauts, all to let you know what's going on in the world of human

spaceflight. Space is a very harsh environment.

Intense temperatures of 200

degrees Fahrenheit in the sun and negative 200

degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. You hear about the vacuum of

space and space radiation, microgravity, debris, atomic oxygen.

So you have to ask yourself what kinds of new technologies can hold up in an environment like this?

Not just if they hold up, but how do they hold up, and by how much, and what exactly is happening to those materials and electronics, even solar cells.

Just down the street from NASA's Johnson Space Center. electronics, even solar cells.

Just down the street from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston is a small company called

Alpha Space, and they manage a commercial R&D facility on the International Space Station

called Missy, M-I-S-S-E.

This facility is mounted on the outside of the space station

with pallets of hundreds of different technologies at a time.

It's exposed to the harsh environment of space in

low Earth orbit where the International Space Station flies. Materials, circuit cards,

CPU, solar cells, and more fly up to the station on a cargo craft. They're brought

inside by astronauts who then send these technologies outside through an airlock.

They're exposed to space for a while, then brought back inside and put in a cargo vehicle for delivery

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