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Status Report: 01-328

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION 
Expedition Three Science Operations

Weekly Science Status Report
Wednesday, October 10, 2001

Student science returned to the International Space Station this week with a photography experiment that lets students take the pictures.

The Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students (EarthKAM), which ended in May when the school year ended, resumed Tuesday, October 9. Using the Internet, the students control a special digital camera mounted on-board the Station. This enables them to photograph the Earth's coastlines, mountain ranges and other geographic items of interest from the unique vantage point of space. Managed by the University of California, San Diego, the EarthKAM team then posts these photographs on the Internet at http://www.earthkam.ucsd.edu for the public and participating classrooms around the world to view. For example, California Trail Junior High School students in Olathe, Kansas, are studying plate tectonics. Kansai Soka Junior and Senior High School students in Osaka, Japan are studying the relationship between ancient cities and modern geographical features, the habitat of a migratory bird and other subjects. Students from Our Lady of Lourdes School in Slidell, La., are using imagery to study rain forest destruction.

The Experiment on the Physics of Colloids in Space conducted 12-hour runs on Saturday and Sunday, October 6-7, and began a 96-hour run on Tuesday, October 9. A colloid is a system of fine particles suspended in a fluid. Common examples are paint, milk and ink. They also are found in copymachine toner, phosphors for computer screens, emulsion droplets in cosmetics, and anti-slip floor coatings. And they are used in manufacturing processes such as polishing silicon for computer chips, removing bitter tastes from wine and fruit juice. Managed by NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, this basic research into colloid behavior in the Station's microgravity environment could contribute to engineering of new materials.

On Tuesday, October 9, all three crew members completed their procedures for the Pulmonary Function in Flight (PuFF) experiment. The test was also was run before Monday's Russian spacewalk. Researchers are looking for any changes in lung anatomy or performance caused by the spacewalk or microgravity. This research, developed by the University of California, San Diego, is important to maintain crew health as NASA prepares for longer space missions. Each PuFF session includes five lung function tests, which involve breathing only cabin air. The focus is on measuring changes in the evenness of gas exchange in the lungs, and on detecting changes in respiratory muscle strength. Just as rising too quickly to the water's surface can cause scuba divers to suffer decompression sickness - commonly called "the bends," sudden exposure to high altitude can result in the same symptoms in pilots and space crews. Extra vehicular activities (EVA) in space, or spacewalks, pose a risk of nitrogen bubble formation due to the low pressure environment of the space suit. The human body is normally exposed to 14.7 pounds per square inch (1.034 kilograms per square centimeter) of pressure - the pressure of the Earth's atmosphere at sea-level and inside the Space Station. A space suit provides only 4.3 pounds per square inch (0.302 kilograms per square centimeter) of atmospheric pressure. Additionally, little is known about how the lungs are affected by long-term exposure to microgravity - the near-weightlessness found in the environment of space. Unevenness of gas exchange is a symptom of virtually every pulmonary disease, and gas exchange can be temporarily disrupted by the filtration by the lungs of nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream. Changes in respiratory muscle strength may result from long periods in the absence of gravity. Ground controllers for the first time were able to activate and deactivate PuFF supporting equipment, saving 20 minutes of crew time onboard. The crew is scheduled to perform the PuFF studies during another spacewalk planned for next week.

Photography targets for the Crew Earth Observations program were uplinked to the crew this week. They include South African aerosols, Chilean glaciers, Lake Poopo in the Andes, Hurricane Jerry in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mekong and Ganges River deltas in Asia, European smog near the Alps, and the coast of Somalia. Scientists on Earth are interested in features such as human development, winter snowpack, lake levels flooding, vegetation, etc.

The Cellular Biotechnology Operations Support System team reported on Friday, October 5 that the temperature in their biotechnology refrigerator was hovering at the desired point for cell samples inside processed earlier in Expedition 3. Commander Frank Culbertson repacked the samples earlier in the week to ensure good airflow in response to temperature concerns from the team. The objective of NASA's biotechnology cell science Station research, managed by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, is to provide a controlled environment for the cultivation of cells into healthy, three-dimensional tissues that retain the form and function of natural, living tissue.

Other activities scheduled for this week include several tests of the Active Rack Isolation System, the Crew Interactions survey and, as crew schedules permit, Dreamtime earth observations, documentary and educational video sessions. Automated experiments onboard the Station in the fields of materials,-More- biology, acceleration measurement and radiation measurement continued to function normally during the past week.-30-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.

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.