Sixteen Days of Science

One of the more mundane tasks for astronauts is cleaning the experiments' filters. In microgravity equipment needs a constant flow of air to remove heat since gravity is needed for hot air to rise. Most experiments have an easily accessible filter. The astronaut shuts off the experiment, removes the filter and uses a piece of duct tape to pick the lint off of the filter and then puts the cleaned filter back into the experiment. In a video recovered after the accident Laurel Clark is seen cleaning the CIBX filter.

CIBX (Commercial Instrumentation Technology Associates Biomedical Experiments) was an automated factory. A twist of a knob by an astronaut mixed together pairs of chemicals. Later in the mission another twist mixed in fixatives to stop the experiments.

MGM - Mechanics of Granular Materials - studied how particles act in earthquakes, grain in silos, and even how you can stand on beach sand. MGM had a latex container filled with a sand-water mixture. As pressure was applied to the cylinder video cameras monitored how the shape of the cylinder changed. There was a problem with sand clumping and the scientists asked Rick Husband to "spank" the MGM experiment to try to get rid of the clump.

FAST - Facility for Adsorption and Surface Tension - studied surface tension - how bubbles form. The automated experiment blew bubbles. It transmitted video to the ground along with telemetry indicating the pressure and temperature. To celebrate the end of a highly successful mission the FAST team set up their system to do a "fireworks display" blowing bubbles left and right. Fireworks movie courtesy of the FAST team.

ZCG - Zeolite Crystal Growth - grew high quality zeolite crystals. ZCG had a 573 degree F furnace which heated tubes filled with the crystals. The sign reads "Do not disturb. Experiment in progress."

John Glenn donates blood for STS-95's Protein Turnover experiment

Laurel draws blood from volunteer John Charles in training

Laurel holds out her arm for a blood draw during STS-107

The day before reentry Laurel Clark narrated a video of the Spacehab module where commander Rick Husband showed off the freezer filled with the blood, urine, and saliva samples which the crew contributed during their 16 days in space. Clark called the samples their "liquid gold" - a pun on the color of the urine and the value of the samples to the scientists on the ground.

There was also a sleep experiment and other life science activities before and after the mission. On the STS-95 version of the sleep experiment the subject wore an instrumented harness. A simplified version was flown on STS-107 and other missions so more subjects could participate. Each of the seven astronauts wore an Actilight - a wristwatch-like microcomputer which kept track of the light level and amount of movement.

Laurel makes an unusual entry in her sleep diary as part of the Sleep-Wake Actigraphy and Light Exposure During Spaceflight experiment.

SEM-14 consisted of passive experiments selected by ten groups of students, including the Shoshone-Bannack tribe in Idaho. Their club "Native American Science Association" meets in their school. They flew their "More fun with Urine" experiment where simulated urine was used to make paint. The student painted various materials which were put in vials inside the SEM-14 canister.

S*T*A*R*S

A rare closeup photo shows the medoka fish and Spice bees experiment (left) and the control locker on the ground (right). Note how much sawdust has been created by the bees eating their balsa wood hive in the space experiment.

The chemical garden grew blue cobalt chloride crystals on a white background, and white calcium chloride crystals on a blue background. The colors were selected because they're Israel's national colors. On the ground the tendrils grew up away from gravity while in space they grew in many different directions.

The "chemical garden" logo	Cobalt Chloride crystals - ground and space	Calcium Chloride crystals - ground and space	The Ilan Ramon with the Israeli chemical garden
The "ants in space" logo	The Australian space spiders logo	Liechtenstein issued a stamp to commemorate the Spice bees	Ilan Ramon working on S*T*A*R*S

Some of Columbia's payloads just used the shuttle as a platform to put their experiments in space. Three payloads were mounted on top of the Spacehab module, MSTRS, StarNav, and Com2Plex. Others were mounted on FREESTAR.


The Air Force's "Miniature Satellite Threat Reporting System" (MSTRS - pronounced "misters") was a radio receiver designed to monitor the normal radio frequencies and strength at the shuttle's altitude.

StarNav was a star tracker, built by students at Texas A&M University. The team’s goal was to design an inexpensive star tracker to determine the shuttle’s attitude. A CCD camera was mounted in a tube with a single-board computer. The computer converted those images into readable star charts, and its Lost In Space Algorithm (LISA) program calculated the spacecraft’s orientation. The software had to isolate debris and other unwanted defects in the photos so accurate star patterns could be determined.

Com2Plex consisted of three heat pipes – passive methods used to maintain temperature in orbit.

OARE - SAMS

Two complementary sensors - OARS (Orbiter Acceleration Research Experiment) and SAMS (Space Acceleration Monitoring System) - measured the quality of the microgravity environment. The data was used to support STS-107's ultra-sensitive microgravity experiments, especially the Combustion Module and ZCG. Here's the daily status reports which show how the instruments measured the microgravity quality.

SAMS was useful for measuring the effects of mechanical equipment like pumps and fans, while OARE was sensitive to subtle changes to the shuttle's orientation caused by the tiny wisps of atmosphere at the shuttle's altitude and the tendency for the shuttle to drift out of orientation. SAMS included a set of sensors which were placed at strategic locations close to the experiments. Both SAMS and OARE could measure the astronauts activities if they bumped something by accident or exercised while a sensitive experiment was running. This graph shows the overlapping ranges for the two instruments.

VCD

VCD tested how to recycle urine into potable water. On long duration spaceflights recycling is an important way of extending your supplies. Every gallon of water you can recycle is a gallon which doesn't need to be launched from the Earth. Besides drinking and washing water is also useful for creating air. Russia has used its Elektron unit for years to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is dumped overboard as a waste product and the oxygen becomes part of the air the crew breathes.

On STS-107 imitation urine was used to test the VCD hardware, just some salts mixed with water. The imitation urine enters a spinning drum where the pressure is reduced and the temperature is increased. The liquid changes into steam and is carried outside the cylinder where it's cooled into purer water. Electrical sensors measured the purity of the refined water.

VCD occupied a refrigerator-size rack inside Spacehab. It performed several runs during the mission.

The FREESTAR (Fast Reaction Experiments Enabling Science, Technology, Applications and Research) bridge consisted of six secondary payloads flying on a space available basis. The six FREESTAR payloads were MEIDEX, SOLSE, SOLCON, LPT, CVX-2, and SEM-14.

SOLCON was a Belgian instrument designed to monitor the "Solar constant" the amount of energy produced by the Sun. The amount of energy from the Sun changes over an eleven year cycle with more sunspots and activity when there's more energy from the Sun. Some spacecraft which remain in space monitor the solar constant. But it's also useful to have a specially calibrated instrument fly every couple of years to act as a "spot check" and verify that the instruments aboard long-term satellites haven't degraded over time. SOLCON first flew on the STS-9 mission in 1983. STS-107 marked SOLCON's seventh flight on the shuttle, and accomplished the goal of monitoring the Sun's solar output over two eleven year cycles.

CVX-2 - Critical Viscosity of Xenon - was a science experiment to measure the viscosity (slipperiness) of Xenon at its critical point (the temperature and pressure where a substance is both a liquid and a gas at the same time.) Here's the very technical status reports the team released during the mission. The automated experiment was mounted in two canisters on the FREESTAR bridge.

The original CVX experiment flew on the STS-85 mission in 1997.

LPT - Low Power Transceiver - was an experimental wireless Intranet demonstration. It featured a radio, self-contained computer, GPS receiver, and antennas. LPT successfully communicated with ground stations and satellites in space. It was highly successful, returning all of its data before Columbia's reentry. Future spacecraft will be able to use LPT's technology to reduce costs - standard off-the-shelf software can be used to transmit scientific data back to the scientists in their offices instead of specialized communications equipment and custom-written software for each mission.

Views of FREESTAR as it was prepared for flight.

MEIDEX (Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment) was the Israeli sponsored experiment to study dust clouds from space.

The primary area of interest was a region over the Mediterranean Sea. To increase the chances for success the scientists chose two additional "Regions of Interest" over the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast.

MEIDEX was a scientifically calibrated video camera with six filters. The scientists selected the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared filters to examine specific chemicals. When MEIDEX's video was transmitted to the ground it looked like just a flickering display but the flickers were actually the different filters in operation. In many cases the video started with the ordinary color video cameras mounted within the shuttle's cargo bay and then the astronaut sent a command to change the video transmissions to MEIDEX as they passed over a region of interest.

During the mission MEIDEX successfully captured dust clouds over Africa in this image provided by the MEIDEX science team / Israeli Space Agency / NASA.

On the final orbit before MEDEX was scheduled to be shut down dust clouds appeared over the Mediterranean Sea in the primary region of interest.

A secondary goal for MEIDEX was to look for sprites - upward lighting bolts. They had been captured by chance during previous missions by the shuttle's cameras, but never with a scientifically calibrated camera. The sprites team was very successful capturing sprites several times during the STS-107 mission. The scientists on Earth examined the data transmitted from the shuttle and used false colors to enhance the elusive sprites. Some of the enhanced images were transmitted back up to Columbia during the mission.

Sprite images courtesy of the MEIDEX science team / Israeli Space Agency / NASA.

MEIDEX and SOLSE were mounted in canisters on the FREESTAR bridge. Motorized doors covered the instruments to protect them when they were not in use and opened up to expose the instruments to space.

The three experiments shared the same scientific rack. After each experiment completed its allocated time it was put away and the Experiment Mounting Structure (EMS) for the next experiment was installed. Here's the status reports which were released during the mission.

Laminar Soot Process (LSP) was the first CM-2 experiment. It used a jet of flame to study how soot forms in microgravity. In microgravity there's no convection so flames are much more stable. That makes it easier to examine their behavior in fine detail.

In this LSP run it took two tries to ignite the flame.

Later flame balls were either named by the crew or the payload team on the ground. Since the accident SOFBALL scientist Paul Ronney has decided to continue the crew's tradition and is naming the flame balls from the earlier tests which weren't named during the mission. Here's the list of official SOFBALL names courtesy of Paul Ronney.

Dave Brown announces that the 9 flame balls are dedicated to the Mission Control shift on duty, Orbit 2.

After SOFBALL was finished Ronney sent the crew a summary of the preliminary results.

NASA's excellent science.nasa.gov website put out a story "A Flame Ball Named Kelly" about the experiment.

Mike Anderson adjusts the CM-2's video display

A closeup view of the astronaut video monitor

A typical SOFBALL test underway

SOFBALL ended with a bang - 9 flame balls

The Mist experiment had a tube where a fine fog-like mist was created in the right half of the tube. A flame was ignited in the left half and a diaphragm was opened which permitted the flame to travel to the right side where it was extinguished by the mist.

The crew took several photos as they installed the Mist hardware.

There was a leak in the system which the engineers on the ground determined was in the gas chromatograph line. Somebody suggested kinking the line to squeeze it shut and a procedure was developed and sent up to the crew including this picture.

K.C. was emailed instructions for how to seal off the line.

The Mist EMS's key components

The Mist EMS

First Mist test

A happy Mist team on FD14

Once the Mist experiment was repaired the scientists made the best use of their remaining time, completing 32 tests. These videos, courtesy of Mist scientist Angel Abbud-Madrid, show the differences between a lean dry flame and a very lean wet flame as they move from left to right down the flame tube and are extinguished by the fog of water. You can clearly see differences in the shape of the flame and how quickly it moves before it's extinguished.

Astroculture was a commercial experiment which grew flowers.

On Earth plants use light and gravity to tell them how to grow. So what happens when you remove gravity and can control the light level and magnetic fields? The Biotube experiment grew small plants hoping to use a magnetic field as a substitute for gravity. Video frames were transmitted to the ground. The Biotube scientists took those video frames and made them into a time lapsed movie.

These three frames show the Biotube experiment at various stages as the plant sprouts and grows over a day.

Rick Husband working on OSTEO

This rare photo shows the Microbial Physiology Flight Experiment (MPFE) which incubated bacteria, antibiotics, yeast, and anti-fungi samples.

Rick Husband uses injector guns to squirt fixative into the BRIC experiment to stop the moss growth at preplanned times during the mission.

Ilan narrated a video clip of Rick Husband working on the BRIC experiment.

This spiral-shaped moss from STS-87 surprised scientists and they reflew the experiment on STS-107 to see if it was a fluke or would happen again

Containers filled with C. elegans worms used space which would have otherwise been wasted

Willie McCool works on the Leukin experiment a day after launch	Laurel Clark works on the Ysters experiment. Rick Husband is in the background with a vacuum cleaner	In this rare photo Laurel Clark works on a Biopack experiment inside its glovebox.
The Biopack cartridge, about the size of a computer mouse	A cutaway drawing showing the Biopack Type 1 cartridge's mechanism for mixing chemicals	The automated Biobox experiment complemented Biopack

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