Shuttle Crew Reports Faces Are Puffier, Muscles Flabbier

Their faces are puffier. Their muscles are flabbier. But Columbia’s astronauts are still feeling frisky halfway into their 14-day medical mission.

“We’re having a lot of fun, getting a lot of work done,” pilot Richard Searfoss said Monday.

Astronaut William McArthur Jr. said not he, Searfoss or Dr. David Wolf, all space rookies, have had motion sickness. Two-thirds of astronauts become nauseated in the first few days of flight.

“We were frisky from the minute the main engines cut off,” McArthur told radio interviewers.

But Searfoss reported a loss of muscle strength. Wolf said he could feel his body change in weightlessness: His legs got skinny and his face puffy because of the upward shift of body fluids.

“When I first saw myself in the mirror up here, I had to take a second look to see if it was really me,” Wolf said.

Columbia’s 14-day voyage, expected to end Monday, is the longest shuttle flight ever planned by NASA and only the second mission dedicated to medical research.