Space Station Science Operations Status Report for the week ending May 31, 2001
RELEASE: 01-195
The Expedition Two crew finished setting up a device to protect experiments
from vibrations and began efforts along with ground controllers to activate
an experiment designed to study the physics of materials used in many
manufacturing processes.
“We’ve had some good successes and major accomplishments in the past week,”
said John Uri, Expedition Two Lead Increment Scientist from Johnson Space
Center.
Ground controllers Wednesday, May 30, activated EXPRESS Rack Two in
preparation for activation of the Experiment on the Physics of Colloids in
Space. Initial activation of the colloids expeirment was not successful,
and troubleshooting continued today. A colloid is a system of particles
suspended in a liquid. Common examples are milk, ink and paint. This
experiment is part of an effort to understand the basic behavior of
colloids. It could lead to colloid engineering and development of new
manufacturing materials and processes on Earth with applications in
semiconductors, electro-optics, ceramics, composites, coatings, and food.
Flight Engineer Jim Voss on Tuesday, May 29, completed the last half of
setup work for the Active Rack Isolation System, located in EXPRESS Rack
Two, in preparation for activation later. Using sensors and pushrods, ARIS
acts like a powered shock absorber to react to disturbances such as crew
exercises and vibrating equipment to provide a better low gravity
environment for delicate experiments.
An additional growth chamber in Protein Crystal Growth Single Thermal
Enclosure (PCG-STES) Unit 10 was activated Monday, May 28. Three of the six
chambers in Unit 10 are now active. An identical experiment device PCG-STES
Unit 9 was activated earlier in the mission, along with all six of its
growth chambers. Protein molecules are involved in numerous biological
processes. Scientists hope the space experiment will reveal more about
their structure and yield advances in medicine, agriculture, the environment
and other biosciences.
On Saturday, May 26, Flight Engineer Susan Helms continued operations with
the Middeck Active Control Experiment (MACE II). This expeirment, first
begun during the Expedition One mission and continued by Helms, is testing
control mechanisms that can be used in large articulated spacecraft as well
as other industrial applications.
The crew continued to conduct normal maintenance of active science
experiments – re-charging radiation sensors, downloading sensor data to
computers, checking experiment status panels and photographing hardware
setups.
Seeds in the Advanced Astroculture experiment have sprouted, and the science
team based at the University of Wisconsin reports the seedlings appear on
video to be slightly larger than expected. Scientists hope to use the long
duration Station mission to grow plants from seeds to the seed production
stage and learn whether there are any genetic changes. A commercial company
is using the experiment as the basis for Internet-based education programs
for classrooms.
A list of targets for Crew Earth Observations photography was uplinked to
the crew Tuesday, May 29. Targets of this ongoing investigation included:
major industrial complex of Cape Town, South Africa, smoke and ash from
Volcano San Cristobal, Nicaragua, Parana River Basin development in South
America, glaciers in the Chilean Andes, ice and snow covers in the South
Sandwich Islands, Antarctic ice, Peruvian and Bolivian Andes peaks. Water
levels in the lakes of the Andean Altiplano. Human development and global
warming investigations are continuing themes for these photographic studies.
The science and payload teams have decided to discontinue trouble-shooting
with the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus and return the
experiment on an upcoming Space Shuttle mission. An investigation team has
been assigned to look into the cause of the failure.
“That’s a hardware problem we don’t fully understand,” Uri said. “An
identical unit on the ground has been operating nominally. There have been
several attempts via software patches to bypass what we think the problem
is. Without the ability to water and feed the bacterial samples, the
samples no longer remain viable. We’ve flown CGBA 15 times on the Shuttle
and twice on Mir. The hardware is fairly well proven, but this is a problem
we’ve never seen before. We need to get the unit back and look at it.”
The science team sent up a message to the crew thanking them for their
effort to recover the payload.
“While we are certainly disappointed, we are in no way giving up on the
bigger picture of what this commercial space research project represents,”
said Dr. Dave Klaus, principal investigator for the experiment, with
Bioserve Space Technologies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “Our
colleagues at Bristol-Myers Squibb understand the challenges of conducting
research in space, and we expect our long-standing collaboration to continue
as we work towards future flight opportunities.”
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Editor’s Note: The Payload Operations Center at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages all science research experiment
operations aboard the International Space Station. The center is also home
for coordination of the mission-planning work of a variety of international
sources, all science payload deliveries and retrieval, and payload training
and payload safety programs for the Station crew and all ground personnel.
Contact
Steve Roy
Media Relations Department
(256) 544-0034
Steve.Roy@msfc.nasa.gov
