Biospecimen and Data Sharing: NASA Institutional Scientific Collection at Ames Research Center (ISC-ARC), and the Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA)

For decades, NASA and international partners have conducted biological experiments in space to understand effects of spaceflight and address potential hazards. To enable spaceflight back to the Moon, and then to Mars and beyond, it is imperative to further understand basic science and health risks associated with spaceflight, along with developing countermeasures. The sending of experiments and organisms into space is a costly endeavor. To maximize scientific return, sharing with the scientific community both space-flown biospecimens and data from completed experiments is essential. New fundamental, applied, and bioinformatic science insights can be gained from specimen and data sharing efforts. Data reuse enables spaceflight health risk modeling, analyzing adverse outcomes across spaceflight hazards, and deep space autonomous support for the flight medical officer.