NASA Lab Director to Discuss Nutrition

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Scott M. Smith, director of the Nutritional Biochemistry Laboratory at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, will talk about spaceflight nutrition and its implications on Earth during the annual meeting March 2 of the Arkansas Association of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Smith will address the conference at 1:30 p.m. Friday, March 2 with a talk titled “Spaceflight Nutrition: Implications for Earth, the International Space Station and Beyond.” Other sessions of the conference are limited to people who pre-registered, but Smith’s presentation is free and open to the public. He will speak in the Graduate Education Building on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville. There will be time for questions following the presentation.

The Arkansas Association of Family and Consumer Sciences conference will bring 50 people to Fayetteville for two days of sessions on Thursday and Friday. Members of the organization are secondary teachers, Cooperative Extension agents, university faculty members and business professionals.

The primary goal of Smith’s laboratory group is to determine the nutritional requirements for extended-duration spaceflight through operational and research activities. The nutritional status of International Space Station crew members is assessed before and after flight, including the collection of blood and urine samples. The lab evaluates the stability of nutrients in foods during extended-duration space flight, studies the effects of simulated weightlessness on calcium and bone metabolism and investigates treatments for spaceflight-induced changes in human physiology.

Smith was the principal investigator of a calcium kinetics experiment that was part of the STS-107 mission on the Space Shuttle Columbia. He also helped craft the nutritional recommendations for extended-duration spaceflight currently in use and is co-chair of the Multilateral Operations Panel-Nutrition Working Group that includes representatives of the Canadian, European, Japanese and Russian space agencies.

Smith actively supports NASA’s educational and outreach efforts, including developing the “Adopt-a-Classroom” project and the associated Space Nutrition Newsletter, and he developed a space nutritional biochemistry course at the University of Houston.

Smith received a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1985 and a doctoral degree in nutrition in 1990, both from Pennsylvania State University, and conducted postdoctoral research work on the interactions of micronutrients and thermoregulation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center in Grand Forks, N.D. He began working at the Johnson Space Center in 1992 and has won both team and individual awards during his tenure with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.