Seek to Learn Why People Get Sick in Space : Astronauts Go Sledding in Shuttle Test
Four of Challenger’s astronauts endured jolting, carnival-like rides on a sled rolling on 12-foot rails inside their orbiting laboratory Thursday in an experiment to learn why people get sick in space.
None of the test subjects reported getting sick, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration flight director Chuck Knarr said all eight crew members were healthy, but experiments designed to confuse and upset the inner ear balance mechanism did take a toll.
‘Ceiling Appears to Be Floor’
Ernst Messerschmid, one of two West German scientists in the eight-member crew, reported that “the ceiling appeared to be the floor,” an illusion that he said took him more than half an hour to dispel.
Messerschmid was one of the four who rode an electric-powered sled that is able to give sudden and violent acceleration forces equivalent to the force of gravity on Earth. While riding the sled, the astronauts wore helmets that blacked out their sight or displayed a rotating dome painted with dots to further confuse their balance mechanism.
The experiments began just a few hours after Wednesday’s noon launch of Challenger from Kennedy Space Center in Florida and continued into Thursday as the crew, the largest ever launched, started 24-hour operations in the pressurized Spacelab carried in the shuttle’s cargo bay.
Commander Henry W. Hartsfield, Steven R. Nagel, Bonnie J. Bunbar and West German Reinhard Furrer worked from noon to midnight, and James F. Buchli, Guion S. Bluford, Messerschmid and Wubbo Ockels of the Netherlands were on duty from midnight to noon.
Malfunction by Furnace
All of the equipment in the laboratory was turned on, but officials reported that a furnace intended to melt metals malfunctioned. Experts on the ground worked to figure out how to fix it.
The astronauts reported a successful start on a number of other experiments. Data was collected on a colony of fruit flies that will hatch during the seven-day mission, and lights were turned on to start germination of corn seeds. Also on board are fertilized frog eggs, a colony of one-celled animals called paramecia, and a variety of bacteria.
The biological samples will be studied after their return to Earth to see if their development was affected by weightlessness.
The astronauts also launched a small experimental Defense Department satellite called the Global Low Orbiting Message Relay, a Defense Advance Research Projects Agency system designed to track Soviet submarines under the Arctic ice.
3 Others Take Rides
In addition to Messerschmid, sled rides were taken by Furrer, Bluford and Ockels. All said they could tolerate the sudden movements and Bluford said it was “smoother and less provocative than on the ground.”
About half of all space travelers experience motion sickness during the early days of a mission, and experts had expected that the sled could aggravate this tendency.
