千山百水
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, September 21, 1992
5
KU space project on hold
Engineering students fear delay could ruin crystals
By Muneera Naseer
Kansan staff writer
Although the Space Shuttle Endeavour landed yesterday, KU students will have to wait nearly three weeks to learn if their experimental project, which was aboard the craft during the eight-day mission, was successful.
NASA's post-flight work with the shuttle prevents immediate retrieval of the $10,000 project, and students fear the delay may affect the crystals that were supposed to form during the experiment.
"We're working against time," said Art Riegel, St. Louis senior and member of the Kansas University Space Program that designed the project. "The crystals decompose after a set amount of time."
He said protein crystallization was the core of the three experiment project, which KUSP members hope could lead to advances in designing pharmaceutical drugs.
The students said they thought protein would crystallize with less deformity in the zero-gravity conditions of space. The results would have been similar to what would have the crystals analyzed. In the long run, the results obtained from the analysis might be published in a
Tom Miller, Leawood junior and president of KUSP, will go to Florida on Oct. 9 to retrieve the experiments.
scientific journal.
He said once the experiments were in Lawrence, he would be able to relax.
"It's not over yet," he said.
After the experiments return to Lawrence, students will examine the entire project, which was self-contained and activated by a computer programmed by students.
The computer also was programmed to control temperature so the crystals could form.
"If the computer didn't work, then the experiments would not be activated and there would be no crystallization." Riegel said.
The engineering students who designed the apparatus containing the experiments will check to see if the structure was able to absorb the vibrations when the shuttle was launched and when it landed.
Paul Fieseler, founder of KUSP and 1988 KU graduate, said the launching of the project and its return provided a sense of completion to a chapter of his life.
Several KUSP members have graduated since the beginning of the project in 1986.
"It ended on a good note " he said.
Firesheer, who now works for National Aeronautics and Space Administration's mission control in Houston, said he visited the command center once a day to monitor how things were going on in the mission.
"Everything seemed to go very smoothly," he said.
Shuttle lands without a hitch
Endeavour makes several space firsts on nine-day mission
The Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Endeavour suiled through a clear sky and landed at Kennedy Space Center yesterday with seven astronauts and their animal brood, ending the first shuttle flight devoted to Japanese research.
"Congratulations on a highly successful and historic mission," Mission Control's Ken Reighter told the astronauts once they were back on Earth.
The mission was one of firsts: the first married couple in space, first African-American woman in space and first Japanese to fly on a U.S. spaceship.
They achieved yet another space first during the eight-day laboratory research mission with the fertilization and hatching of frog eggs. The resulting tadpoles are the first creatures, other than insects, to be conceived and developed in weightlessness.
While the tadpoles were a success, the hornet experiment failed.
Israeli entomologist Jacob Ishay
discovered that two-thirds of his 180 Oriental hornets aboard Endeavour died because of high humidity in their containers during the flight.
Despite the astronauts' efforts to reduce humidity inside the hornet chambers with a fan and encouraging reports of nest-building, none of the hornets built any combs in orbit, Ishay said.
Ishay said he wanted to see how the hornets would build their nests in the absence of gravity.
NASA's newest shuttle landed on the concrete runway at Kennedy at 9:53 a.m. Just before nosewheel the concrete runway, a red, white and blue drag chute popped open and slowed the spacenets as it rolled to a stop.
About 350 guests, many of them Japanese, watched the landing from bleachers near the runway.
NASA delayed Endeavour's return by $1\frac{1}{2}$ hours, or one orbit, because of the threat of rain in the area. The rain stayed offshore.
Endeavour logged 3.3 million miles during its journey, which began Sept. 12, and circled Earth 127 times. It was NASA's 50th shuttle flight, but only the second flight of Endeavour.
Most of the animals were hustled off the shuttle a few hours after landing so scientists could examine them for any lingering effects of weightless-
Eendeavour's menagerie included the 180 hornets, two carp, four adult female frogs, as many as 447 tadpoles
— researchers were busy counting them — 7,600 flies and 30 fertilized chicken eggs, some of which will be allowed to hatch.
Japan's space agency provided the carp, flees, chicken eggs and most of the 40 other experiments. NASA researchers supplied the frogs.
The astronauts split 12-hour shifts during the mission so the animal, crystal, metal and glass-metting, and human medical tests could be performed continuously. NASA added a day to the flight midway through the mission so the crew could conduct extra experiments.
Although the mission featured the first married couple in space — astronauts Mark Lee and Jan Davis — they worked opposite shifts in orbit and saw little of one another.
Robert Crippen, director of the Kennedy Space Center, said he expected more married couples to travel together in space.
"People are going to be flying in space a very long time so I'm sure it's going to happen again," Crippen, a former astronaut, said. "But don't ask me when."
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New, Transfer, or Readmitted KU Students:
You May Be on Hold!
Several thousand Lawrence campus students are on hold because they have not documented their immunizations. University policy requires that all new and readmitted students* provide documentation of the mandatory immunization to Watkins Health Center Immunization Department by Thursday, October 1.
Failure to do so will result in a hold being placed on your Permit to Enroll. You will be unable to enroll for Spring 1992 until it is removed. The Mandatory Immunization is the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) received after 12 months of age. There is no charge for a required immunization. Immunization Department Hours: Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Walk-ins are accepted.
- Students born before 1957 are exempt but must submit a Health History form to Watkins Immunization Department.
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