Astronauts Must Rush Aurora Study but Results Are Cheered

Discovery’s astronauts captured more startling scenes of light cascading off the atmosphere Tuesday in a rush to get as much “Star Wars” data as possible with an instrument that was running low on coolant.

“It was the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen,” astronaut L. Blaine Hammond said after one observation.

Pentagon officials said several observations of the aurora, or atmospheric light, would be lost as a result of the rapidly dwindling coolant. But that was not too bothersome for program managers.

“The quality of the data it is getting, it just far surpasses our expectations. We are getting things that have never been acquired,” said Michael Harrison, a research official with the Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as “Star Wars.”

The information collected so far on the southern lights, or aurora australis, “probably dwarfs the total summation of our knowledge” of the aurora, Harrison said.

The seven astronauts are splitting 12-hour work shifts to collect as much data as possible.