Astronauts Test Ways to Fight Dizziness; Flight Nears Record

The Columbia astronauts tested ways to counteract the dizzying effects of a sudden return to gravity Sunday as they drew closer to a U.S. shuttle flight endurance record.

The seven-member crew expects to break Columbia’s old record of 10 days 21 hours in space this morning and seeks to set a new 13-day record before a scheduled return to Earth on Wednesday.

“We’re all very happy the orbiter has been performing so well and given us no concern on mission duration,” flight director Randy Stone told reporters at Mission Control in Houston on Sunday.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is using Columbia to lay the groundwork for the $30-billion space station it wants to build later this decade.

Since they took off from Florida June 25, the five men and two women have been working in split shifts around the clock on 31 major experiments and equipment demonstrations ranging from space farming to growing medically important protein crystals.

Crew mates Bonnie Dunbar and Larry DeLucas “soaked” for hours Sunday in a waist-high vacuum bag designed to draw blood into their legs.

In weightless space, fluids tend to pool in the upper body, giving most astronauts puffy faces in orbit and dizzy spells immediately upon coming home.

“It’s not quite like standing on your head, but a lot like it,” Dunbar said in an interview conducted while she sat in the device.

The barrel-shaped lower body negative-pressure device is making its fourth shuttle flight. One treatment in the bag lasts for about 24 hours, and scientists think it may be the answer to NASA’s concerns about shuttle pilots being able to make safe landings after a long time in space.

Three other astronauts downed an experimental drug called Florinef to increase their blood volume as their bodies continue to dehydrate. The drug has been effective on Earth in subjects who experienced lightheadedness after studies involving prolonged bed rest.

NASA spokesmen said the experiments in biology, chemistry, physics and medicine were going “very smoothly and efficiently” and that the oldest of four shuttles had no technical problems as the mission entered its 11th day.

Ground controllers did encounter a computer breakdown at NASA’s tracking satellite reception terminal in White Sands, N.M., but the computer was replaced without interrupting activities.