David Klaus News

Leading space bioastronautics research and inspiring the next generation

Jeff Zehnder — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 21:09:35 +0000

Leading space bioastronautics research and inspiring the next generation Jeff Zehnder Fri, 04/25/2025 - 15:09

Jeff Zehnder

David Klaus has built a career centered around the science and engineering of human spaceflight as a systems engineer, researcher and educator. After four decades on the leading edge, he is embarking on his next challenge: retirement.

“I’ve been lucky,” said Klaus, a professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “I’ve had a really fun career. If you’d asked me 40 years ago what I wanted to do with my life, I would have had no idea, but looking back now, it's easy to see how the dots connected.”

Klaus has supported Space Shuttle launches, played an active role in dozens of research studies that have flown in orbit, worked on designs for future space habitats, crafted curriculum for undergraduate and graduate students, guided federal regulations, and nearly became an astronaut himself.

An impressive list of accomplishments for someone who originally did not see himself spending a career in aerospace.

Growing Up

“Space wasn’t something that was talked much about when I was growing up in West Virginia. Watching the Moon landings as a child, the astronauts were like superheroes to me. How do you do that kind of work? I had no idea,” Klaus said.

After high school, he earned an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University and, upon graduation, faced every young engineer’s dream: multiple job offers – he successfully interviewed at Pratt and Whitney, Texas Instruments, and NASA Kennedy Space Center.

He chose NASA.

“I honestly hadn’t thought about opportunities in aerospace, but the possibility that I could work in a program launching people into space? You can’t turn that down,” Klaus said.

Life at NASA

He worked with life support systems in shuttle launch control and before long, had transitioned to Vandenberg Air Force Base and then Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas. Klaus’s job in spacesuit testing and spacewalk operations had an almost perfect crossover with some of his hobbies.

“I had my pilot’s license and was a scuba diver, so I got to get in the neutral buoyancy laboratory, the pool—where the astronauts train—with them,” he said.

CU �鶹ӰԺ

In 1990, he came to CU �鶹ӰԺ with an eye toward a master’s degree. The aerospace department’s BioServe Space Technologies was researching biological life support systems, which Klaus saw as an important advance from the traditional physical and chemical technologies used on the space shuttle.

Klaus’s prior experience at NASA became invaluable for the upcoming BioServe payload activities. His background at both Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers meant he was intimately familiar with mission operations and crew procedures.

“I came for the master’s, but the research became really interesting. I got much more into how spaceflight affects microbes and continued on to a PhD. I did my thesis on how bacteria respond to spaceflight. At that time, there were maybe a couple dozen papers on the topic,” Klaus said.

After completing his PhD and a year-long Fulbright Postdoctoral fellowship at the DLR Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Germany, Klaus suddenly found himself without a job offer, the exact opposite of the situation after his bachelor’s degree.

“I was applying for jobs from Germany, but I never got any responses. BioServe said they needed help with some upcoming flights and would I return? My plan at that point was to only hang out in �鶹ӰԺ for a few months while I figured things out,” Klaus said.

Designing Courses

His “few months” in �鶹ӰԺ quickly became a more permanent chance to conduct space life science research and craft what would become the department's bioastronautics curriculum.

“I developed my first class, space life sciences, in 1993 while I was still a PhD student. Human space vehicles were for me at the time mostly focused on the life support hardware – HVAC systems, pumps, and fans. Eventually I became more aware of the human-centered aspects, that’s how I’ve developed the curriculum here. We start with a human in mind and then move on to what is needed to keep them alive and healthy in space,” Klaus said.

In 2002, Klaus became a tenure-track professor within the aerospace department, cementing his leadership role in growing bioastronautics research and education at the university.

“We’re helping students find their place in the world. I love seeing where they go. They’re the real product of the university; our research is important, but the students are the most significant outcome, in my opinion,” Klaus said.

Across his time at CU �鶹ӰԺ, Klaus has directly advised 24 PhD students and served on another 30 PhD committees, in addition to teaching thousands of undergraduate and graduate students.

Astronaut Finalist

Klaus twice applied to the NASA astronaut program, both times making it through successive rounds of applicant winnowing and being brought in for NASA’s intense multi-day in-person interview process.

“It’s mostly medical testing, like having a weeklong physical,” Klaus said. “They check everything. Do you have two kidneys? You think you do, but I know I do. NASA checked.”

The culmination is an hourlong meeting with a panel of NASA administrators and astronauts.

“You write an essay that they read aloud to the group, then they sit you down and say, ‘Tell us about yourself. Start with high school.’ I was kind of lucky because I knew a lot of the crew. It could be an intimidating experience if you’d never been there before,” Klaus said.

In both cases, Klaus made it to the last group of around 40 finalists for roughly 15 astronaut slots. Unfortunately, he was not selected.

“The first time was a real letdown, but the second time, my oldest son was born the day before I got the call and having a kid changes your perspective on life and risk taking,” Klaus said.

Recent Research

As a faculty member, Klaus’s recent work has included leading the last four years of a Federal Aviation Administration Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation. The seven-university initiative evaluated how the FAA could meet the needs of the growing space sector.

“It really helped the agency extend itself from an aircraft-centered organization into spaceflight, as the FAA must increasingly deal with both vertical and horizontal traffic. The Center helped them broaden their way of operating into multiple flight domains,” he said.

Although Klaus has graduated his last PhD student and will no longer be teaching, he is still working on several research papers related to his time as deputy director of the NASA SmartHab Space Technology Research Institute, which ended in 2024. The effort, called HOME, focused on assessing autonomous or ‘smart’ technologies needed for future space habitats on the Moon or Mars.

“When something breaks in low Earth orbit, you can launch up a new part. That’s not an option for a base on Mars. You need to rely on processes like additive manufacturing, 3D printing, so we’re creating the means to integrate those technologies into the habitat. It’s been a cool way to wrap up my career, looking back at things I learned on the Space Shuttle and what worked for it and now determining other areas where we need new possibilities for deep space operations,” Klaus said.

After his retirement in May, Klaus and his wife are planning to travel, but he is also looking forward to no longer having a need for a daily alarm clock.

“I need a little decompression time,” Klaus said. “I want to be bored for a little bit, to take a breath and reprioritize my days.”

In recognition of Klaus’s contributions to the university, aerospace faculty voted this spring to bestow him with the title emeritus professor. The distinction recognizes his record of exceptional service and allows him the opportunity to continue research on campus, should he decide retirement can wait a bit longer.

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Research in space, helping people on Earth: BioServe marks 100th orbital launch

Jeff Zehnder — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 20:28:51 +0000

Research in space, helping people on Earth: BioServe marks 100th orbital launch Jeff Zehnder Mon, 04/21/2025 - 14:28

Louis Stodieck remembers the first time he saw a space shuttle blast off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In April 1991, Stodieck, an aerospace engineer, was the associate director of BioServe Space Technologies, a research center at the �鶹ӰԺ.

He had helped to design a set of test tubes that would, among other things, not spill the moment they reached space. Stodieck handed the test tubes off to a NASA crew, then watched as his work lifted away from a launchpad aboard the space shuttle Atlantis.

“I never get tired of launches,” said Stodieck, who served as BioServe’s director from 1999 to 2019 and is now its chief scientist. “The sound reaches you seconds after the launch because you’re a few miles away. When it hits you, it’s this low vibration, and you just feel it.”

BioServe founder Marvin Luttges in 1989. (Credit: BioServe)

The BioServe team poses for a photo in 1996. (Credit: BioServe)

A test tube designed for space by BioServe. (Credit: BioServe)

BioServe, which was founded in 1987, works with scientists at companies and research institutions around the world to conduct life science experiments in space.

Today, Stodieck and his colleagues are celebrating a new milestone: BioServe’s 100th launch into orbit.

On Monday, April 21, a SpaceX Dragon capsule lifted off from a similar pad in Florida en route to the International Space Station (ISS). It carried equipment belonging to three research projects, or “payloads,” developed by BioServe. They include several colonies containing billions of bacteria and algae.

“This launch is an amazing milestone,” said Stefanie Countryman, the current director of BioServe. “It exemplifies the hard work of everybody at BioServe, not just our engineers and researchers, but also our students.”

The center has come a long way since that first launch, NASA’s STS-37 mission, in 1991.

Researchers at the center have since sent a wide range of living things into orbit. They include single-celled organisms but also ants, silkworms, mice and an intrepid “spidernaut” named Nefertiti. (An 18-year-old student from Egypt proposed studying whether Nefertiti, a jumping spider, could adjust her hunting techniques in space, which she did). But BioServe has also kept one foot planted on the ground. The center’s research has generated new insights into human medical conditions like bone loss and cancer—and could even lead to facilities in the not-so-distant future that orbit Earth while making human stem cells.

“Space gives us an opportunity to look at organisms in new ways, including how they may express genes differently than they do on Earth,” Countryman said.

Single-celled astronauts

David Klaus, professor at the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, was a graduate student at CU �鶹ӰԺ when BioServe’s first launch took off. From 1985 to 1990, he worked as a shuttle launch controller at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and in Mission Control in Houston. Klaus is set to retire this spring and sees the 100th BioServe launch as a “bookend” on his career.

In those early days, BioServe’s work largely revolved around one challenge of conducting science from hundreds of miles above Earth—open liquids and space don’t mix.

“It’s not like taking two test tubes in a lab on Earth and mixing them together,” Klaus said. “With our early payloads, we were really just trying to figure out how we could manipulate biological fluids in a space environment and get some initial experimental results.”

BioServe began as a 5-year grant from NASA under founder Marvin Luttges, a professor of aerospace engineering sciences at CU �鶹ӰԺ. Klaus explained that the center’s space test tubes include up to four sealed chambers. If you push down on a plunger, you can mix the fluids in those chambers one by one, all without exposing them to the air. BioServe has since sent thousands of its test tubes into space, and the basic design remains largely the same.

The team’s early research also revealed something surprising: BioServe scientists discovered that bacteria tend to grow better in space than they do on Earth—perhaps because they’re not being squished down by gravity. A handful of experiments showed that such bacteria could even be transformed into living factories for making anti-cancer drugs.

Astronaut Jessica Meir uses a microscope supplied by BioServe aboard the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)

A lab 250 miles up

In the decades that followed, BioServe’s scientific equipment wound up on NASA’s four space shuttles, the Russian space station Mir and, eventually, the ISS, which entered into orbit in 1998.

Today, astronauts on the ISS can peer through a microscope flight certified and launched by BioServe and grow cell cultures in four incubators called Space Automated Bioproduct Lab (SABL) 1, 2, 3 and 4. BioServe even supplied the refrigerator where humans on the ISS store their food. On the ground, the center runs a mission operation and control center on the CU �鶹ӰԺ campus. There, BioServe staff talk to astronauts in real time on a giant screen.

“We’re replicating the sorts of biological labs that you can find at CU �鶹ӰԺ in space,” said Tobias Niederwieser, a research associate at BioServe.

Astronaut Alexander Gerst loads biological cultures into a SABL incubator on the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)

Adeline Loesch assembles space "petri dishes" containing biological organisms in a lab on the CU �鶹ӰԺ campus. (Credit: Adeline Loesch)

The center has also collaborated with dozens of space agencies, universities and private companies over its history. On the current launch, for example, a company called Sophie’s Bionutrients based in the Netherlands contracted with the center to examine how algae produce proteins in space—which the company hopes will lead to new kinds of algae-based meat substitutes.

The center’s most lasting contribution to science, however, may be its students. Over the years, hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students at CU �鶹ӰԺ have worked for BioServe. Many have gone on to jobs at NASA and private space companies.

They include Adeline Loesch, a senior studying atmospheric and oceanic sciences at CU �鶹ӰԺ. She started working at BioServe between her freshman and sophomore years. These days, she does a little bit of everything for the center: She helps to build the hardware for experiments, assembles them for flight and sits in the operations center as astronauts carry out the research.

In the fall, Loesch will start work in spacecraft and satellite flight operations for Lockheed Martin in Colorado.

“My favorite is watching the projects come full circle during the operations,” Loesch said. “Watching the research being done in real time by astronauts in space is the coolest thing ever.”

Making humans healthier from space

In the end, BioServe’s research in space doesn’t stay in space.

Roughly 24 years ago, for example, Stodieck and his colleagues designed a specialized habitat for mice to live on the ISS. His team’s research has revealed new clues to why mammals lose bone mass when they leave Earth. Those insights, in turn, helped to inspire new kinds of medications for osteoporosis in people.

Niederwieser, meanwhile, is tackling what may be an even more ambitious goal—he and his colleagues are growing human hematopoietic stem cells in space. Doctors often transplant these cells into people to treat cancers like leukemia and lymphoma.

But they’re also tricky and expensive to make on Earth. In a few early experiments, Niederwieser and his colleagues discovered that stem cells, like bacteria, may grow more freely in space. Later this year, his team plans to transport a facility for producing stem cells en masse to the ISS.

That could lead to a new vision for space—one in which stations in orbit around Earth produce various treatments for human illnesses, then send them back to patients on the ground.

“Humans have been on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years and have evolved with only one gravity,” Stodieck said. “It’s really been a privilege to understand how organisms work in another environment.”

Stodieck didn’t travel to Florida for Monday’s launch, but Klaus was there to see SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket roar off the launchpad. Before he left, he was feeling wistful about seeing his old stomping grounds again.

“I'm looking forward to going down there and reminiscing a little bit,” Klaus said. “I’ll drive around and look at the base—a little 40-year flashback to where my career started.”

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Deep sea vs. deep space in Discover Magazine

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 14:50:35 +0000

Deep sea vs. deep space in Discover Magazine Jeff Zehnder Tue, 03/11/2025 - 08:50

David Klaus is featured in a new Discover Magazine article.

The feature discusses unique and similar risks to exploring deep space and the ocean floor here on Earth.

Klaus, a professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, is an expert on spacecraft habitat design and operations as well as life support system development.

Although the deep recesses of the ocean are much closer than the far reaches of space, only about 26 percent of the ocean floor has been explored.

Many of the challenges astronauts face living in space are similar to those of deep sea divers.

“The fundamental functions are, for all practical purposes, the same, but the difference is in how you meet those functions,” says Klaus.

Read the full article at Discover Magazine...

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Help is a long way away: The challenges of sending humans to Mars

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 16:59:25 +0000

Help is a long way away: The challenges of sending humans to Mars Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/02/2021 - 09:59

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin stepped out a lunar lander onto the surface of the moon. The landscape in front of him, which was made up of stark blacks and grays, resembled what he later called “magnificent desolation.”

When it comes to desolation, however, the moon may have nothing on Mars.

The red planet circles the sun at an average distance of about 140 million miles from Earth. When people eventually visit this world—whether that’s in 20 years or 50—they may face a journey lasting 1,000 days or longer. The entire Apollo 11 mission, in contrast, lasted just a little over eight days. If future Mars astronauts get lonely, or if something more serious goes wrong, help is a long way away.

For researchers who study how human bodies and minds respond to the rigors of space travel, the scenario poses a lot of unknowns.

“We have never put someone in space for that long,” said Allie Anderson, an assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “There will be a lot of challenges we can’t predict because the human body doesn’t always behave as we predict when living in space.”

Those challenges are in the spotlight again after NASA successfully landed its most recent non-human astronaut, a rover named Perseverance, on the surface of Mars Feb. 18. They’re also the bread and butter of researchers studying bioastronautics, or the study and support of life in space, at CU �鶹ӰԺ.

Anderson, for example, explores high-tech clothing that can monitor the health of astronauts as they live and work on Mars. Her research, she added, has evolved a lot as people across the globe are feeling increasingly isolated in their own lives. A second team led by engineer David Klaus studies how space habitats that employ “smart systems,” such as intelligent robots, might one day help humans to survive on the surface of an alien world.

It’s a research focus that comes with zero room for error, said Klaus, a professor of aerospace engineering sciences at CU �鶹ӰԺ.

“Today, if something breaks on the International Space Station, astronauts can always get into a capsule and come home,” he said. “When you start getting out toward Mars, you’re very far away. You can’t rely on ground control.”

The stillness of space

Top: Allie Anderson (middle, in helmet) participates in a class held in southern Utah and led by the CU Anschutz Medical Campus simulating the challenges of providing medical care on Mars; bottom: A patch of fabric that weaves in electrodes for monitoring human heart signals. (Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Anderson lab)

Anderson noted that space can be a dangerous environment but also one that brings a sense of tranquility. It’s something she got to experience herself, if only for a few seconds in 2015. The engineer, who was then a postdoctoral researcher studying how low gravity environments can affect human eyesight, had the opportunity to ride on one of NASA’s famous parabolic flights—large airplanes that fly high into the air then plummet quickly to make passengers feel like they’re weightless.

In a recent video, Anderson described a moment she had to herself at the end of that flight: “I gently push off, and in that 20 second window, I get to just float and experience the calmness and stillness of space.”

For the engineer, who refers to herself as a “little bit of a Martian” because of her passion for that planet, the feeling was short-lived. For Mars astronauts, that stillness will be an everyday reality. Even communicating with friends and family back home will be an ordeal. If you speak into a microphone on Mars, it can take anywhere from about five to 20 minutes for someone on Earth to hear your call. Mental health interventions like psychotherapy will be nearly impossible.

“Astronauts aren’t going to be able to take a vacation from that environment,” Anderson said.

So she and her colleagues, among other research projects, are trying to work within that uncertainty. They’re designing tools and strategies that may one day allow health professionals on Earth to monitor and even treat Mars explorers when they’re feeling stressed out.

Katya Arquilla, a graduate student working with Anderson, sees a lot of parallels to the challenges of providing mental health resources on Earth.

“A big issue is to get over the stigma of mental health,” she said. “That’s a problem we see here on Earth all the time—getting people to realize that they may have a mental illness and to seek help.”

In one project, Arquilla and Anderson have devised new ways of collecting electrocardiogram (ECG) data on human patients. These heart signals, which are often used to diagnose heart attacks and similar health problems, can give medical personnel a window into how people are handling stress. Normally, doctors rely on obtrusive and uncomfortable adhesive electrodes to take ECG data. Arquilla, in contrast, developed and tested new kinds of woven electrodes that can be incorporated into the fabric of a normal, tight-fitting T-shirt.

Arquilla said that her thinking about the project has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, millions of Americans—not just highly-trained astronauts—are undergoing the kind of loneliness and isolation that may await future Mars explorers. She hopes her research can make their lives better, too.

“I think the conversation on mental health here in the United States is finally shifting in a healthy direction,” she said. “Hopefully, these types of technologies can be integrated into care on Earth, as well.”

Habitats as ecosystems

When people from Earth finally make it to Mars, they’ll need someplace to sleep—and those future living spaces will have to be much more than just homes, said Patrick Pischulti, a graduate student working on Klaus’ team.

Top: Graduate students (from left) Patrick Pischulti, Annika Rollock and Ray Pitts in front of a full-sized model of a space shuttle nose cone on the CU �鶹ӰԺ campus; bottom: An artist's depiction of what a space habitat might look like. (Credits: CU �鶹ӰԺ College of Engineering and Applied Science; NASA)

“For astronauts, the space habitat is their ecosystem,” he said. “It provides oxygen. It provides water. It protects them from the dangers of the space environment.”

Klaus, Pischulti and their colleagues are focusing on how NASA and other space agencies can keep these delicate ecosystems “alive” even when humans aren’t onboard. In other words, how can a space habitat continue to function when there are no astronauts around to perform routine maintenance? The research is part of a NASA-funded initiative called the Habitats Optimized for Missions of Exploration (HOME) Space Technology Research Institute, which is led by the University of California, Davis.

That’s important for Mars exploration in which habitats may sit empty for months in between crewed missions, Klaus said.

“With the exception of a few short durations in between Skylab missions in the 1970s and during the early International Space Stations construction phase, there’s never been an opportunity or a need in NASA’s missions to have a human spacecraft with no humans onboard,” he said.

The key to developing these kinds of self-sufficient homes may lie in “smart systems.” That’s a catchall term for intelligent machines, from vacuuming robots to floating networks of fire detectors, that can work in tandem with human users. NASA, for example, has already sent three robots collectively known as Astrobee to the International Space Station. The space agency is testing whether these flying, cube-shaped machines will be able to help astronauts complete their daily chores, such as shuttling objects around the station.

On Earth, there are no shortage to these kinds of tools, said Annika Rollock, a graduate student working on the HOME project. She and her colleagues, however, are seeking to better understand which ones may be critical for keeping astronauts healthy and safe—and which ones might only get in the way or, even worse, put human lives at risk.

“We have to say, ‘This AC unit or fire detector works great in an apartment building, but it won’t work in space, or it’s not going to be worth sending it into space,” Rollock said.

For now, working in the field of bioastronautics can take a lot of patience—it may be decades, if not longer, before we see an Earthling set foot on Mars. But Anderson is hopeful, at least, that she’ll see her hard work make it to the red planet one day.

“I am hoping to see somebody stand on the surface of Mars before I die,” she said. “Even though I think I’ll be an old woman when that happens.”

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CU �鶹ӰԺ part of new NASA institute on space habitat design

Anonymous — Fri, 03 May 2019 16:13:09 +0000

CU �鶹ӰԺ part of new NASA institute on space habitat design Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/03/2019 - 10:13

The College of Engineering and Applied Science at CU �鶹ӰԺ is part of a new NASA funded Space Technology Research Institute that will advance space habitat designs using resilient and autonomous systems. The work is part of a larger effort to prepare for a time when astronauts will venture further into space, out of low-Earth orbit and on to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

The new institute called Habitats Optimized for Missions of Exploration, or HOME, will be a multi-disciplinary effort led by the University of California Davis with support from the �鶹ӰԺ, Carnegie Mellon University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Howard University, Texas A&M University, and the University of Southern California. The institute as a whole will receive as much as $15 million from NASA over a five-year period with CU receiving $3.5 million during that time at $700,000 per year.

According to NASA, these institutes are intended to research and exploit cutting-edge advances in technology with the potential for revolutionary impact on future aerospace capabilities. At the same time, they expand the U.S. talent base in research and development.

This new institute’s design approach for deep space habitats is one that relies not only on proven engineering and risk analysis, but also on emergent technologies to enable resilient, autonomous and self-maintained habitats for human explorers. It seeks to advance early-stage technologies related to autonomous systems, human and automation teaming, data science, machine learning, robotic maintenance, onboard manufacturing, and more.

Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Professor David Klaus led the CU team on this proposal and serves as deputy director for the Institute, which is headed up overall by former astronaut and UC Davis professor Steve Robinson. The CU �鶹ӰԺ members include Associate Professor James Nabity, and Assistant Professors Allie Anderson and Torin Clark. All three are also based in the aerospace department. In addition, College of Engineering and Applied Science Dean and AES Professor Bobby Braun has an executive advisory role in the effort.

Klaus said the CU team was excited to be selected for this opportunity.

“This work builds nicely on many prior space habitat design projects we have conducted in our Bioastronautics Lab and lays the foundation for showcasing a much higher fidelity test facility that will be established in our new aerospace building,” he said.

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