Denver Post: With space station link, CU’s BioServe adapts to an evolving research role
Shankini Doraisingam, staff operator of Bioserve Space Technologies, is monitoring astronaut Kate Rubins on the International Space Station
With a video camera peering over her shoulder, she begins work on an experiment charting the effects of microgravity on heart cells — a study that could help shed new light on the challenges of human space travel. In the office cubbyhole more than 200 miles below, a team of six CU staffers and students working for BioServe Space Technologies, a center within the school’s Aerospace Engineering Sciences department, monitors each exacting step.
Armed with laptops and expertise on the hardware, software and science, they represent the latest version of CU’s continually evolving link to the nation’s space program. The association now spans nearly three decades in which the center has sent materials into low Earth orbit on vehicles from the space shuttle to Soyuz to the SpaceX Dragon capsule that transported the current gear to the ISS last month.