USM project headed for ISS

HATTIESBURG, Miss. – A University of Southern Mississippi project hopes to get a step closer to seeing if an Earth-born organism can live on Mars. USM Professor Scott Milroy recently learned that his NASA-funded “Pioneering Mars” project was selected for payload integration aboard the International Space Station. Milroy’s project is one of two chosen from the NASA ISS National Laboratory Education Project for transport to the ISS sometime in 2015. Milroy notes that while many of the physical, chemical, and climatic conditions of Mars can be simulated in an Earth-bound laboratory, the capability to maintain living cultures, like the blue-green algae in this experiment, in reduced gravity conditions can only be explored on the ISS. Milroy is an associate professor of marine science. (Source: Hattiesburg American, 02/17/14)