How ISS Science works (roughly)

So, before I got into the details of a particular science payload, I think I should talk about how ISS science works. This is a big topic, so I'll have to give a little peek here, and then write more later.

At any given time there are between 3 and 6 crewmembers on board. Historically, there have been more crewmembers - because the Shuttle could bring 7 people at a time. However, since the shuttle program was retired, human spaceflight has relied on the Russian Soyuz vehicle to get men and women into space. With recent the introduction of commercial vehicles capable of supporting human flight, we're going to have even more crew on board the ISS at a given time. The flight plan is worked months and years in advance, so we have a pretty good idea of who's going to be on board. This is important for science for a number of reasons. Here are four:

1. The number of crewmembers defines how much "crewtime" is available for science. All science activities take time. A typical ESA science payload can take as little as ten minutes to execute, or it can take a 30 hours. A ten-minute payload would be basic: for example the crew required to get something out of a box, take a picture, and plug it in someplace.  A 30 hour payload would require a complicated set-up of equipment, and multiple science sessions - where the crewmember performs a series of activities that takes hours. Of course ESA isn't the only organization with science we want to perform. NASA, JAXA, CSA, and ROSCOSMOS all have science they need to do. So we look at the total number of hours in a day, subtract the time needed for sleep and personal activities, subtract the time needed to maintain and fix the systems on the station. And then everything left over goes to "utilization" crewtime. This gets divided among the partners based on pre-existing agreements. And that's what you get. So you can imagine crewtime ends up being a pretty valuable resource. Crewtime costs around $175,000 per hour . Also, you can't really negotiate for more, because the crew can't be expected to work more hours than they already do. When you're out, you're out. So there are a lot of people from each agency who work to make sure that we can optimize the value of this crewtime (I'll make a post about how this is done sometime later). When we're looking to plan our activities waaaay in advance, trying to make sure that we've lined up a research complement that fits inside our allocation. 
2. The crewmembers need training. In order for all the research on the station to be conducted correctly, crewmembers need to be able to easily recognize and execute the activities they'll do. They need a lot of training for this. For each payload there are huge teams of people who develop the procedures and training and, in the months leading up to launch, crewmembers get trained on these procedures and equipment. 
3. We need human subjects. Astronauts aren't required to do anything they aren't comfortable with and they have to agree to any science we do on their bodies (this is an ethical issue and also a legal one). Well in advance of a flight, researchers brief the crewmembers on their experiments and the crew then selects the human research they are interested in doing. They sign an "informed consent briefing". So we need to know beforehand who's going to be on board and what human research science we should propose that they conduct. 
4. We need baseline data collection. A lot of science on-board the ISS has to do with change - trying to find out how systems and people function differently in space than they do on earth, and whether these changes persist after the sample/subject is returned to Earth. In order to measure this change, you need data before and after the mission. Each science payload has its own set of requirements for baseline data collection (BDC) pre- and post-flight. Some baseline data needs to be collected 6 months before launch - and other BDC needs to happen years after the crewmember returns. For the pre-flight BDCs, we definitely need to know who's going to be on board so we can start the BDC sessions on time. 

This is the Soyuz 61 Rocket being prepped on the launchpad in the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This is a spaceport located in an area of southern Kazakhstan leased to Russia. (Source: nasa.gov) This is the site of all Soyuz rocket launches. We have relied exclusively on the Soyuz vehicles to get men and women into space - but this is changing. (Source: nasa.gov)

On 30 May 2020 SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft launched at 3:22 p.m. EDT from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., taking U.S. astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the ISS. This was a historical launch and represents a spectacular and interesting change in the way we plan and execute science on board the ISS. We're going to be able to get more crewmembers, and missions of different lengths. This will give us more crewtime and interesting subjects for comparing data.

The historical launch of the crewed SpaceX vehicle to the ISS represents an exciting evolution in the human spaceflight program (source: nasa.gov)

Also, within the next year or so we expect to have space-tourism: men and women who can afford the hefty price tag for a flight. We don't really know whether these crew will be willing to do science for us. Of course we'd like them to. In particular it would really be great if they're willing to sign up to be human research subjects. Because so few people have actually gone into space, this makes it difficult to get statistically valid numbers for human research - information that will be critical if we want to continue pushing the boundaries of exploration beyond our planet. If you're a private astronaut looking forward to a flight and you happen to be reading this: consider this a personal appeal from a space scientist. Please consider signing up for as much research as you think you can handle. We need you.

When we've selected the research and technology demonstration payloads that are supposed to be executed, we start working on these. You can imagine that we've been working on a lot of science since the ISS began. You can find NASA's archive of ISS experiments payloads at this link. This should be open to the public. They don't keep the scientific papers here, but they do have references to them. The European Space Agency also keeps an archive of its experiments and you can find that here.