Critter-Crammed Shuttle Soars Into Orbit

Brimming with thousands of crickets, snails and other creatures, shuttle Columbia soared into orbit Friday on a two-week mission that NASA expects to provide the best look yet at how the brain and nervous system adapt and develop in weightlessness.

“It’s a little bit like a Cecil B. De Mille production: years in the making, cast of thousands and it went off like it was supposed to,” said Joseph Bielitzki, chief veterinarian for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Columbia vaulted into a clear afternoon sky to the delight of tens of thousands of people who jammed the Kennedy Space Center in a post-holiday crush. The ship glittered for nearly five minutes as it sped toward the east.

One day late in taking off, Columbia was outfitted with a new data processor to replace one that failed in the final hours of Thursday’s countdown. It also was loaded with a fresh batch of crickets and mice.

As if there weren’t enough animals on board--a total of 2,052 crickets, snails, fish, rats and mice, to be exact--a bat tried to hitch a ride.

The small black bat attached itself to the back of the huge external fuel tank late in the countdown, said launch director Dave King. As soon as the booster rockets ignited, the bat let go and tried to fly away. In all likelihood, officials said, it became toast.

Four hours after liftoff, the astronauts floated into Columbia’s bus-size laboratory and began setting it up for 16 to 17 days of neurological tests. Exams, some of them unpleasant, will be conducted on the seven-member crew and the animals.

The shuttle is carrying 1,514 crickets, nearly half in the soon-to-hatch egg stage. None is old enough to chirp. Also aboard are 18 pregnant mice, 152 rats, 60 snails and 75 snail eggs, and 233 fish.

By knowing how the nervous system adjusts to weightlessness, NASA will be in a better position to send astronauts to Mars and establish moon colonies.

The space agency also hopes to solve some of the nagging health problems that afflict astronauts in orbit as well as older people on Earth: insomnia, vertigo, imbalance, reduced blood pressure and weakened immunity.

Twenty-six experiments valued at more than $100 million will be conducted during the mission. Among other things, the astronauts will be spun on a chair, jabbed with needles, covered with electrodes, squeezed into a decompression chamber, and monitored during sleep.

The four oyster toadfish aboard have electrodes in their heads to measure nerve impulses, and 24 of the rats have temperature and heart rate sensors attached to their skulls.

All of the mice and some of the rats will be killed and dissected in orbit. Most of the other animals will be killed for dissection once they return to Earth.