Valerie Cassanto holds a piece of the Commercial ITA Biomedical Experiments payload that was carried on mission STS-107 and recovered.

Valerie Cassanto holds a piece of the Commercial ITA Biomedical Experiments payload that was carried on mission STS-107 and recently recovered. She is the daughter of John Cassanto of ITA, who is part of a recovery team transferring experiments to alternate containers. One of the experiments was the Growth of Bacterial Biofilm on Surfaces during Spaceflight (GOBBSS), a Planetary Society-sponsored astrobiology experiment developed by the Israeli Aerospace Medical Institute and the Johnson Space Center Astrobiology Center, with joint participation of an Israeli and a Palestinian student. The recovery team also includes Eran Schenker of the Israeli Aerospace Medical Institute; David Warmflash of JSC, and Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society. The GOBBSS material will be sent to JSC where the science team will analyze the samples, studying the effects of spaceflight on bacterial growth.