Alumni Profile

John Hines (MS 1975 EE) is quick to point out what would seem to be incredibly obvious: that life on earth is accustomed to being on earth. As the Small Spacecraft Division Deputy Chief and Astrobionics Integrated Program/Project Team Leader at NASA’s Ames Center in Mountain View, Calif., Hines is in charge of developing technologies and spacecraft for finding out what happens to life—most importantly human health—when it leaves the earth’s familiar gravity and radiation shielding. As NASA ponders new Moon and Mars missions, the prospect of humans visiting space more often makes his studies of space biology a rather intriguing pursuit.

What are some of the things your research is investigating?

Well, for many years now I’ve been the lead for physiological and medical monitoring technology development, where we’ve been developing wearable physiological measurement systems, biomedical sensors, and data acquisition systems that could be used by astronauts and flight crews. We’re now beginning to see what type of monitoring systems we will need for human exploration when we start doing the lunar missions and the future missions that the agency is planning to do. Through my astrobionics activity, I manage and supervise those efforts in support of the Johnson Space Center’s human research program.

I also have been the project manager and director of the GeneSat project, which is a program to develop miniaturized spacecraft in the 12-pound range for monitoring biological parameters, genetic changes in model organisms. These include e.coli, yeast and other small organisms such as drosophila (a small fly) and c. elegans (a small worm), plants, and so forth. We have developed the in situ analytical equipment, the measurement system and the sample management system to be able to monitor those in a small spacecraft without having to bring the samples back. We’re able to prepare the sample, operate the experiment and measure those genetic parameters in space and send the data back by radio. We’ve developed the whole spacecraft and system built around the Cubesat and Nanosat configurations. Some of that work has arisen from, was pioneered by, and advanced by Professor Bob Twiggs there at Stanford. So we flew that first mission, the GeneSat, this past December after a 3–4 year development of the basic technology. So that’s another big area we’re very proud of.

Why would being in space make a difference in biology or in medicine?

Beyond the psychology effects of being in confined spaces for long durations, some of the physiological and biological things that are being found is that it appears that the immune system can be suppressed in the microgravity environment. Essentially we are creatures of a 1g environment. When you go to a different environment, those stresses that our body has been conditioned to function with—the pull of gravity— goes away, and it causes some changes. Normally your body has to counteract gravity to pump blood back up to the heart as it goes to the circulatory system. If you take that force of gravity away, the body is still conditioned to push that fluid northward but you don’t need to push that much. You also have gravitational stresses down to the cellular level that the body is conditioned to respond to that aren’t there. It has to learn a different response.

So some of the manifestations are that people in space feel dizzy, and they don’t have to work as hard. It’s like not exercising for a long period of time and you basically get somewhat deconditioned.

So do we know precisely why the immune system is suppressed in space?

It’s the subject of lots of studies and quantitative measurements. One of the reasons we are trying to get more granularity with these genetic and molecular measurements is just to find out what kinds of things are changed.

On the GeneSat that went up in December, what was on board?

We measured the effect of a single gene target on e.coli, K12, a benign strain of the bacterium that has no adverse effects on humans. We engineer the bacteria to have a green fluorescent protein tag that will allow us to monitor for changes in that protein as a function of changes in the gene it is attached to.

This was a technology demonstration to prove that we could do it. The target was a gene that would glow brightly and one that would grow slowly so depending on the conditions of the experiment we were able to make sure that we were able to quantify the system and validate that our systems, our detections ,our estimates and that our spacecraft were working properly.

You’ve worked with EE Professor Greg Kovacs often, haven’t you?

Greg and I have been associates for many years. About 4 or 5 years ago, he along with Dr. Tony Ricco and Dr. Judith Swain formerly of the medical school, initiated the National Center for Space Biological Technologies (NCSBT), which is a combination of resources and expertise for the electrical engineering department and the medical school to assist NASA in looking at both biological technologies such as those technologies we used in GeneSat, and biomedical technologies and measurement technologies such as those for physiological monitoring.

And so Tony Ricco is the director of (NCSBT), with Greg being the principal investigator. Tony has also functioned for several years as our chief technologist for Astrobionics here at NASA Ames to really focus the expertise and support us in our activities.

The GeneSat and Cubesat system itself and our whole activity in this small spacecraft arena really started with Greg and I talking at a meeting of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. We had heard about the work that Professor Twiggs was working on, and Greg was able to bring us together and that really started our activity in 2001 and 2002.

Let’s go further back in time and ask how you your college years led to all this.

During my undergraduate work at Tuskegee University in Alabama, I became interested in biomedical engineering by being a technician at the veterinary school. I was privileged to work in that lab where they were doing open heart surgery, cardiovascular research, and developing instruments and implantable sensors and bioinstruments for monitoring cardiovascular function in horses. That exposure really set me on the path of wanting to do things in bio-related technologies and bioengineering. I came to Stanford in 1972 with the idea of pursuing that area. At that time there was not a full major in bioengineering. Basically you enrolled in the electrical engineering program and took courses in medicine and engineering and designed your own program.

At that time I also worked at SRI International in the radio physics lab, which exposed me to space research, and as part of working at SRI, I was exposed to NASA. I was looking for a Masters project to work on, which ended up to be a project related to Doppler blood flow measurement. It made use of the radar in the physics lab that I was working in and the courses I was taking in medicine and electronics at Stanford. It all really came together well. NASA gave us a contract at SRI to evaluate some of the types of radar equipment that could be applied to medical monitoring. All of that arose because I was looking for a project for my independent study masters project.

That’s pretty interesting that you were working with the Soviet Union right about when President Reagan called it the ‘evil empire.’

Those were interesting times. When they were having those saber rattlings, some of these scientific programs were the only things going on that the countries were doing together to show that there were still ways to cooperate.

We went to Russia right after the Korean airliner was shot down. The first time I went to Russia in 1980 was the week after President Carter canceled U.S. participation in the Olympics.

How else do NASA Ames and Stanford collaborate?

We were just over with the center director this week to meet with the vice provost and dean of academic research to talk about work that might be done with gravitational physics being able to use the same GeneSat-sized platform to do some work with the Gravity Probe B team. We’ve begun to talk with the bioengineering and Bio-X folks about eventual collaborations. It’s just amazing having the proximity of the world class expertise at Stanford and the world class space activities right here together. It’s just a great opportunity to go forward in the future to do big science in small packages.