1578 Microsc. Microanal. 26 (Suppl 2), 2020 doi:10.1017/S1431927620018590 © Microscopy Society of America 2020 Mochii ISS-NL: Electron Microscopy Has Arrived at the International Space Station Christopher Own 1 , James Martinez 2 , Theodore DeRego 1 , Lawrence Own 1 , Zachary Morales 1 , Katherine Thomas-Keprta 3 , Zia Rahman 3 and Donald Pettit 3 1 Voxa, Seattle, Washington, United States, 2 NASA Johnson Space Center / Structural Engineering Division, Houston, Texas, United States, 3 NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, United States An electron microscope is now, for the first time, in Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station (ISS). A Mochii™ portable electron microscope was delivered to ISS via the Cygnus spacecraft on NASA’s NG-13 commercial resupply mission (Fig. 1), and is now traveling at 17,136 mph, about 250 mi above the Earth’s surface [1]. As a new addition to the ISS National Laboratory, Mochii ISS-NL will support novel in-situ microgravity science and engineering in low Earth orbit (LEO) for the benefit of humankind [2]. The ISS is currently the only manned facility available that supports research in the unique continuous microgravity environment of LEO. Equipment and materials on board ISS are available for use by the public – researchers, commercial companies, and educational institutions – to perform experiments and engineering in microgravity. Major motivations for providing sophisticated capabilities like electron microscopy on ISS include:  Measurement of sample response to unique environments (radiation, microgravity, ionization)  Progress of phenomena over time (crystal evolution, cell growth)  Needs from crew or vehicle (telemetry, safety assessment)  Samples that may be altered or destroyed during return to Earth (precipitation experiments, fragile or time-sensitive samples) The addition of the Mochii ISS-NL facility to the ISS toolset enables a broad range of scientific inquiries that are relatively routine on Earth but have until now been impossible to perform on-vehicle in the space environment. The high native resolution and chemical ID offered by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) serves broad areas of science and engineering. Mochii ISS-NL is a joint project between NASA’s Structural Engineering, Astromaterials divisions, the Astronaut office, the ISS program, and commercial company Voxa. It provides for a modified commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) collaborative multi-user tablet-controlled instrument integrating sub-micrometer imaging and EDS into a coffee-maker sized form factor, to be installed in the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) [3]. (Fig. 2) After initial demonstration, on-orbit investigations expected to be conducted with Mochii include materials studies such as microgravity crystal growth, in-space manufacturing, and fracture analyses. Mochii is also planned to perform morphological, textural and chemical characterization of extraterrestrial samples and impact craters from space environment exposure. Longer-term, we expect to also process biological samples from living creatures. Concurrently, Mochii will enhance crew and vehicle safety by rapidly and accurately identifying microscopic mission threats, especially in time-critical situations where debris from damaged systems cannot be sent back. Examples of such critical situations are crewmember Luca Parmitano’s waterlogged extra-vehicular activity (EVA) suit in 2013 and the ISS starboard solar https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1431927620018590 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 35.173.202.170, on 19 Feb 2022 at 13:59:57, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at