When the space shuttle Atlantis touched down in the summer of 2011 at Cape Canaveral, closing the book on the U.S. shuttle program, a team of U.S. Army researchers stood at the ready, eager to get their gloved hands on a small device in the payload that housed a set of biological samples. Results from studying these samples shed light on how the human immune system responds to stress and assaults while in space – and maybe here on Earth.