Page 18 - International Space Station Benefits for Humanity, 3rd edition.

that meet these challenges rise above the surface of space station, while 416 investigations were conducted
the water, generating increased commercial activity during the last six crew rotations. Since both the
and adding to quality of life. These are the concrete, crew hours devoted to research and the capabilities
or retrospective, benefits derived from ISS activities. to conduct multiple experiments simultaneously have
increased significantly in the past 6 to 8 years, much
Applying this analogy illuminates a couple of pitfalls
to avoid when evaluating the economic value of ISS of the research results generated on the space station
research endeavors. For one, focusing exclusively are still in early stages of evaluation by the primary
on the concrete benefits already above the surface, investigators. The dissemination of the new knowledge
derived in the relatively short period of time the space to the greater scientific community is also in its
station has been in orbit, one can easily overlook the early stages.
significant amount of new knowledge and innovative The data collected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
technical development being generated below. (AMS-02) investigation exemplify this time lag.
In addition, although initial research efforts began The AMS-02 is a particle physics detector intended
shortly after the first module was orbited in 1998, to help answer fundamental physics questions, such
assembly of the space station was the top priority as “What makes up the universe’s invisible mass?”
through the next decade. As illustrated by the or “What happened to the primordial antimatter?”
accumulation of crew hours devoted to investigations The AMS-02 was installed on the ISS in May, 2011
aboard the ISS, research has taken priority in only and had collected data on more than 90 billion cosmic
the last 6 to 8 years. At the same time, new research ray impacts by 2016 when initial results were published
facilities have steadily been added since 2011, with (http://www.ams02.org). Although the data have
capabilities to control and monitor experiments from provided support for some theories of dark matter
the ground, thereby substantially expanding the and spurred debate about the existence of new
numbers of investigations that can take place astrophysical phenomena, more time is needed for
simultaneously. As a result, 166 research investigations the physics community to fully digest the data, and
were conducted during the first six crew rotations on for new or modified theories to be tested.

Cumulative crew time allotted to research.
Image credit: NASA

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