Columbia Astronauts Begin Experiment to Fight Dehydration

Columbia’s astronauts heated up saline solution Friday for injection into their veins and the shuttle doctor got out his “black bag” for a routine medical exam.

“I couldn’t be a real doctor without a black bag,” astronaut-physician Bernard Harris Jr. said, holding up a plastic bag containing a stethoscope. He pointed out astronaut Charles Precourt’s ailments, all minor and typical for space travelers: a puffy face and “chicken legs” because of the upward shift of body fluids in weightlessness, edematous or fluid-filled and swollen eyes, and shifting organs.

Body fluid shift leads to dehydration in orbit. The body senses extra fluid in the chest and activates hormones to reduce the amount of blood and other body fluids. The results, when astronauts re-encounter gravity at the end of a flight, are plummeting blood pressure and dizziness.

In an attempt to prevent this or at least ease the symptoms, Harris and the three other astronauts assigned to Spacelab were to be infused with up to a half-gallon of saline solution each. That’s about the amount of body fluid each man has lost since the German-sponsored mission began Monday.

German astronaut Hans Schlegel was the first scheduled for an infusion Friday, followed by the others this weekend. No one has ever undergone such a procedure in space before.

The infusion equipment is similar to what is used in ambulances, said Dr. Gunnar Blomqvist, director of the space medicine laboratory at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “There may be an accident (in space) where you will need to infuse very large fluid volumes very quickly, and this will do it,” he said.

Each of Columbia’s seven crew members is submitting to medical tests during the nine-day flight. But only the Spacelab crew--Harris, Schlegel, German Ulrich Walter and payload commander Jerry Ross--is taking part in the more rigorous exams.

The astronauts also tried Friday to pinpoint a suspected slight air leak that NASA said apparently never existed.

The crew members opened and closed valves in an effort to find a seemingly tiny air leak detected Thursday night in the cabin. But the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Friday that what had appeared to be a leak was just a temperature spike resulting from experimental activities that caused the cabin pressure to change slightly.

Columbia is scheduled to land Wednesday at the space center. The shuttle will stay up until Thursday, however, if the crew can conserve enough power.