What Can Space Offer Humanity? In Pursuit of the Answer, Astronauts Have Been Making a Home in Microgravity for Decades

In a new gallery called “At Home in Space,” the National Air and Space Museum shows how humans have tackled risky and arduous missions to push the boundaries of scientific discovery and exploration

Carlyn Kranking | Associate Web Editor, Science

October 30, 2026 2:05 p.m.

Imagine waking up in a zippered sleeping bag 250 miles above the ground, contained in a vessel traveling five miles per second in a permanent state of free-fall. Each day includes about two hours of exercise to stave off the atrophy of your bones and muscles. And to get home, you must blast through Earth’s atmosphere in a spacecraft.

This is life on the International Space Station, where groups of humans have lived and worked continuously for nearly 26 years.

“It’s very risky, but there’s a reason we do it,” says Jennifer Levasseur, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Research done in Earth’s orbit, she adds, is seeking to find out “what space can offer humanity.” Reaching an answer will require traveling to—and living in—microgravity.

One of the museum’s newest galleries, “At Home in Space,” captures that idea, demonstrating how humans have built a sustained presence off Earth’s surface. The newly renovated hall features one of the main engines from the space shuttle program; a mock-up of the International Space Station’s Destiny module for American science research; a multiplayer, interactive quiz game about space travel; and a quarter-scale model of the Orion spacecraft, eventually to be replaced by the real artifact from Artemis 1.

“At Home in Space” opens to the public on October 30, and another gallery, called “Modern Military Aviation,” will open on November 11. The unveiling of these two halls marks the end of the nearly decade-long renovation process that has seen the Washington, D.C. building be renewed and reimagined. Beginning in 2018, galleries were closed and reopened in phases for “the most extensive project the museum has ever undergone,” director Chris Browne says in a statement.

Levasseur says she hopes that visitors will leave with an appreciation of not just the astronauts who dwell in space, but all the people on the ground who make their work possible. “I’m hoping they understand what kind of effort that takes, and that it’s a serious business,” she adds. “It’s really meant to understand: Can we use space to make our lives on Earth better?”

Some work already suggests that certain drugs and tissues “could be made better [or] more effective in space,” she says.

For instance, research from the space station, modeled in the museum’s mock-up Destiny lab, has revealed something strange about the way proteins grow in microgravity. Unencumbered by the force of gravity’s pull, protein crystals in space grow larger and more uniformly compared with those on the ground. This could lead to new drug formulations that can’t be made on Earth.

Certain cancer treatments, for example, require an IV infusion, which can take upwards of 30 minutes to administer. That’s because these medications need a large dose of liquid that is too thick to be delivered by injection. But space-grown proteins could change that: “You can get these really concentrated formulations that will have a low enough viscosity that they can still flow through the needle,” Katie King, co-founder and chief executive of the biotechnology company BioOrbit, told the Guardian’s Julia Kollewe in May.

The pharmaceutical company Merck has used protein research from onboard the space station to inform delivery of its injectable cancer medication pembrolizumab, marketed as Keytruda, which the Food and Drug Administration approved in September 2025.

“That’s a huge shift for the person who needs that drug, no longer having to sit for hours at a time with an infusion,” Levasseur says. Instead, they can just get a quick shot at the doctor.

But the possibilities of space-grown proteins don’t end at drugs. Another space station experiment is the BioFabrication Facility—essentially, it’s a 3D printer for human cells. If space-grown cells have advantages over those grown on the ground, and if they’re then cultured in an environment that teaches them to withstand gravity, the idea is that they could be used for organ transplants and replacing damaged tissues back on Earth.

“There is a lot of potential there,” Levasseur notes. “Imagine athletes being able to have a bio-printed, space-based meniscus or ACL. If you had to have any of those repaired, it might just be easier or better to have one that was made in space.”

In between their work on these long-term experiments, astronauts grapple with the realities of living on the orbiting laboratory, which offers them a bit more space than a six-bedroom house. The museum’s newest gallery includes artifacts that highlight the nature of this experience, from work gloves to a space toilet—as well as duct tape and Velcro, crucial tools for anyone residing in an environment where everything floats.

Did you know? A marathon in space

In 2007, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams ran the Boston Marathon from the International Space Station’s treadmill. Starting at the same time as the runners on the ground, she completed the 26.2 miles in microgravity. A reproduction of her race bib is on display in the “At Home in Space” gallery.

The exhibition also hosts a backup of the Vegetable Production System, or Veggie, a space garden that allows astronauts on the station to grow their own food. With this experiment—and its successor, the Advanced Plant Habitat—crops such as red romaine lettuce, mustard and kale have been grown in microgravity. Veggie even nurtured zinnia flowers to harvest. In recent years, astronauts have successfully grown peppers, improving the quality of life for space-dwellers.

But space-made proteins—and even peppers—are not grown overnight. Since November 2000, when the first humans entered the space station, subsequent crews have handed off the management of its various experiments, allowing research projects to extend past a single astronaut’s mission duration in space.

“You literally could have started an experiment on day one that was still continuing today, because someone’s always been there,” Levasseur says.

Now, as the end of the International Space Station looms, scientists are looking toward what will come next. By 2031, the orbiting laboratory will be decommissioned and dropped into the Pacific Ocean. In its place, space agencies plan to work with commercial partners to conduct research on privately owned space stations in the future. But as humans push the boundaries of exploration and aim for the moon and Mars, the research on the space station shows the value in making a home in microgravity.

“Having a place that we can go to all the time and do that kind of work is really important.” Levasseur says. “Because it doesn’t just take one day to do an experiment. It takes often years and years and years to get results.”

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