ISS Results: Materials Science

**Dane Turner** (0:00)
Houston We Have a Podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, episode 430, ISS Results, Materials Science. I'm Dane Turner, and I'll be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers and astronauts, all to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight and more. The International Space Station is an incredible research platform for many experiments that are just not possible on Earth. In its more than 25 years in orbit, we've learned a lot about living and working off-planet, from the way the human body reacts to microgravity to keeping spacecraft functional across decades of use. Another thing the ISS can teach us is how materials react to different environments, particularly when exposed to the conditions in outer space, which is where the Materials International Space Station experiment, MISSI for short, comes in.
MISSI has been aboard the ISS in one form or another basically from the beginning, giving researchers insights into the performance of polymers, composites, thermal protection systems, photovoltaics, and radiation shielding technologies when exposed to the space environment. To tell us more about what we've learned from exposing materials to space, we have Kim de Groh, retired Senior Materials Research Engineer, and Sylvie Crowell, Materials Engineer from NASA's Glenn Research Center Environmental Effects and Coatings branch. Let's get started.
Kim, Sylvie, thank you so much for coming on Houston We Have a Podcast today.

**Kim de Groh** (1:51)
Thank you. I'm very happy to be here to talk about material science and the Missy missions.

**Sylvie Crowell** (1:57)
Thanks for having us.

**Dane Turner** (1:59)
So as we get started here, can you tell us a little bit about yourselves and your background, how you came to NASA?

**Kim de Groh** (2:05)
Sure. I'll start. I'm Kim, and I became interested in NASA and the space program as a young girl because my father, who is a biomedical engineer at a research hospital in Detroit, and my older brother, Hendrick, both shared their interest in the space program with me. My father helped analyze some data taken on NASA astronauts for the early space program, and my brother used to paint some wonderful science fiction space paintings, and he wanted to be a medical doctor for astronauts, which I thought was really cool. But a really memorable time for us was when our family watched Neil Armstrong take the first step on the moon back on July 21st, 1969 We watched on a little black and white TV up at our family cottage, which is on Lake Michigan. It was about 10 o'clock at night, and the moon was really bright and visible, and we ran back and forth between the TV and outside on the deck to look up at the moon. So that had a really big impact on me watching that first step on the moon back then with my family.
Fortunately, during my master's program in material science at Michigan State University, my thesis advisor knew I was really interested in NASA, and he helped me to get a summer job at NASA Glenn back in 1986 During that summer, I met my future husband, Henry de Groh, who was a young NASA materials engineer conducting microgravity materials experiments in space on the shuttle. I found Henry's experiments really fascinating, and after working at Glenn for the summer, I knew I wanted to conduct research at NASA with a dream of flying my own materials experiments in space.
After I received my master's degree, I was able to get a job as a contractor at NASA Glenn in 1988, and then I was hired as a NASA employee a year later in 1989 Since then, I've flown many materials space exposure experiments on the shuttle, the Russian Space Station Mir, and on the International Space Station.

**Sylvie Crowell** (4:25)
Hi, I'm Sylvie. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and I've been a local my entire life, so getting to work at NASA Glenn Research Center was my dream. I attended Case Western Reserve University, and I graduated with my bachelors and then my master's degrees in 2024
During my master's program, I was hired as a Pathways Intern at Glenn. And when I got to NASA, my first project as an intern was actually helping Kim analyze data from her Materials International Space Station experiments.
I was really lucky to have Kim and others like her as mentors when I was getting started at NASA. It was super inspiring to see the incredible history of scientific discovery enabled through spaceflight, and to see myself one day following in their footsteps. After graduation, I was hired full time as a Materials Engineer. I've been at NASA for three years now, and I love the work I do.