Astronauts Cycle Around World, Crawl Into Bag
Columbia’s astronauts took turns cycling around the world Wednesday and crawled into a vacuum bag that forced more blood into their legs.
Payload commander M. Rhea Seddon made the ultimate sacrifice for the 14-day medical research mission--she exercised, and hard.
After an hourlong session on a stationary cycle as the shuttle flew two-thirds of the way around Earth, the Tennessee-born physician informed Mission Control: “Us Southern girls don’t like to perspire very much.”
“We’ll be sure to announce that to the world,” said Mission Control’s Carl Meade.
“Oh, thanks, Carl,” she replied.
Seddon and the three other scientists on board also drew blood from each other after swallowing water with calcium on the third day of the flight, a lighter workday than the first two.
The calcium isotopes will show researchers how calcium is absorbed by the body in weightlessness as well as how much bone is lost, a side effect of space travel.
Similar studies are being conducted on the 48 rats on board.
In another experiment, astronaut William McArthur Jr. slipped into a waist-high sack that, via reduced pressure, drew blood and other body fluids from his chest, where it collects in weightlessness, into his legs, where it gathers on Earth.
