 Hey everyone, this is Thelma, a marbled velvet gecko, and she'll be helping me with my space pod today. Why are geckos related to space? Well, the recent Cygna spacecraft brought up a tool to the International Space Station inspired by these attractive little creatures. Stay tuned, this is your space pod for April 13th, 2016. The bottom of geckos feet are covered with thousands of tiny structures called CETA, which branch into even smaller structures called septule, and these allow geckos to grip using something called van der Waals forces. Wait, what are van der Waals forces? Imagine you're at a school dance with both teachers and students on different dance floors. Teachers on average use the whole dance floor space, but at any one time they could all be dancing on one side of the dance floor. The students on the adjacent dance floor don't want to be seen dancing near the teachers, so they all run to the farthest side of their dance floor. Now think of the students and teachers as electrons, causing the dance floor, or molecules, to have positive and negative sides, and you've just learned about van der Waals forces. These forces are very weak on their own, but remember, a gecko has thousands upon thousands of septule, which multiplies that very small force into a larger one. But what does this have to do with space? Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have developed gecko grippers that use synthetic material containing tiny hairs and can grip objects on command. The device uses springs to turn the grip on and off, so all a astronaut has to do is squeeze the gripper, place it on an object, and let go. How can a spring turn stickiness on and off? Imagine my fingers here are like the tiny hairs of the synthetic gecko material. The spring applies a sheer force, causing the hairs to bend. Creating a larger surface area for the van der Waals forces to work on, creating a larger stickiness. Now these hairs prefer to bend in only one direction, kind of like my fingers here. So the gecko pads that you see on the gecko gripper are set up with opposite bend directions, generating maximum grip. The gecko grippers launched to the International Space Station aboard the OA-6 Cygnus spacecraft are a technology demonstration. They'll be placed on different areas of the station for up to one year to see how well their grip lasts. Gecko grippers leave no sticky residues or release fibers like tape or velcro and can be used for thousands of cycles without losing their stickiness. Gecko grippers could be used on future robotic repairs, enabling them to crawl over spacecraft like the International Space Station. Thank you for watching this video and thank you to our Patreon patrons for helping to crowdfund this show. These videos are 100% crowdfunded and would not be possible without the support of our architects, engineers, ambassadors, dreamers and founders of tomorrow. I'd also like to thank roaming reptiles education for their help in providing Thelma here to help me with my spacepod today. If you'd like to know more about crowdfunding this show head to patreon.com slash spacepod and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash t-m-r-o to catch up on all our latest spacepods as they are released. I'd also like to know how you feel about the newest style of my latest spacepods so leave a comment below or let me know via social media. My name is Lisa Stajinowski, this is Thelma and until next time keep on discovering.