Space to Ground: Bon Appétit: May 16, 2025

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

What is said in the film

Welcome to Space to Ground, I'm Chelsey Ballarte. Just last month, a SpaceX cargo spacecraft made a delivery to the International Space Station. It brought more than three tons of food, supplies, and scientific experiments to the astronauts living in orbit. But what comes up must come down, and the Dragon spacecraft is set to return to Earth next week... but it won't come back empty-handed.

This is NASA's SpaceX 32nd cargo resupply mission. Now that it's at the end of its mission, the astronauts will spend this week loading it up with items so that the spacecraft can return cargo back to Earth. So what's coming home? Dragon is bringing books back from space. These books were part of "Story Time From Space," here an astronaut reads children's books, recorded on video, that can be watched at home or in the classroom.

But don't worry, plenty of books remain aboard the space station that the astronauts can read in their spare time. Another passenger on the ride home is hardware from Astrobee REACCH. The Astrobee robot used arm attachments to catch floating items. The technology demonstration successfully showed its ability to grab onto objects and relocate them aboard the space station. One day, technology like this can be used on a larger scale, grabbing onto orbital debris in low Earth orbit.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim recently showed off a creative way that he's using goodies from the cargo delivery that he received. Jonny said that he enjoys cooking, and recently tried out a new bite-sized burger recipe. He used wheat snacks as bread, beef steaks, potatoes au gratin, cheese spread to hold everything together and keep it from floating apart, and some spicy red pepper paste to top it all off. When astronauts are aboard the International Space Station, they spend most of their day working on scientific experiments. Microgravity allows us to do science in ways that aren't possible on Earth.

One field that might benefit from the microgravity environment is that of cancer research, helping find treatments for people back on Earth. In space, cells grow into 3D shapes that behave much like they do in the body. These conditions make it possible to study mechanisms and pathways that control growth and function of cancer related cells in ways that researchers just can't do back on Earth. For example, protein crystals grown in microgravity produce larger more uniformed crystals that researchers can use to see details about its structure that could lead to targeted treatments. One experiment conducted on the space station just this week is called ADSEP-ICC.

It expands on one of the space station's current protein crystallization facilities, allowing astronauts to process even more sample types, including tiny gold particles used in cancer detection and targeted drug delivery systems. To follow along with continued cancer research on station, and to learn more about science coming home next week on a cargo spacecraft check out ISS_Research on social media, and on nasa. gov. That's it for Space to Ground this week. Thanks for watching.

Where this page came from

This page was imported from [NASA](https://images.nasa.gov/details/jcs2025m000070_Space to Ground_570_250516). NASA material is generally not copyrighted and is in the public domain.

Nobody has written it yet — it is the source material at a new address, which is why search engines are asked to skip it and why no one earns from it. It is up for grabs: take it on, and it is yours to rewrite and to earn from.