Astronauts Proceed With Water-Drop Tests on Shuttle

A splattered drop of distilled water was the only casualty aboard the space shuttle Columbia on Sunday as astronauts continued launching science experiments that form the heart of their 16-day mission.

The drop of water splattered against a test-chamber window as payload commander Kathryn Thornton began a set of key experiments. Thornton sought to suspend and rotate a drop of water in the micro-gravity environment of space.

“All systems aboard the space lab are online and calibrated,” and no problems were reported, said a National Aeronautics and Space Administration spokesman at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Thornton donned gloves to clean up the water drop, and proceeded with the experiment, which is designed to give scientists a chance to observe the ways a drop behaves when it comes into contact with different forces.

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Columbia is transmitting video of the experiments back to Earth, where scientists are watching them as they unfold. Because of sophisticated new video cameras and transmission methods, scientists can see the experiments from more than one angle.

Water and sound are playing a key role in the high-tech experiments aboard Columbia. Thornton used sound waves coming from four speakers to suspend and rotate the water drops.

Each drop contained small bits of plastic so that scientists could tell which way the drop was spinning.

It took some time to get the liquid-drop experiment going. Thornton talked to and worked closely with scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., which is part of NASA and is managing the experiments.

A drop that Thornton suspended looked abnormally large--and it was. The drop was about an inch in diameter, compared with water droplets seen on Earth that are about one-eighth of an inch in diameter.