Scientific Quest Was at Heart of Mission
The doomed space shuttle mission carried scores of experiments with tangible applications back on Earth, ranging from the development of new construction techniques to the growth of cell cultures that might be used to fight cancer.
“Science was at a premium,” Ron Dittemore, NASA’s space shuttle program manager, said at the Johnson Space Center. “The folks on the ground were just ecstatic about the amount of science they were reaping. It was an amazing mission. We were ecstatic over the results, and we were looking forward to getting back to the crew and telling them what a great job they had done.”
It remained unclear late Saturday how much of the results survived Columbia’s destruction. Some of it had been transmitted via computers and satellites, officials said. But NASA officials acknowledged that much of it, such as cell cultures, needed to return to Earth before it could be analyzed.
“We were getting some of it downloaded, but we lost quite a bit of data,” said Mohamed Abid, a professor of aerospace engineering at USC who was part of a team conducting experiments on the efficiency of combustion engines.
In that experiment, the astronauts had set off sparks, creating pingpong-ball-sized flames that were suspended in a zero-gravity chamber. The astronauts were able to explore the nature of combustion, an experiment that Abid had hoped would lead to a renaissance in the construction of engines for cars, planes and rockets.
“We only got a fraction of the data,” Abid said. “We were relying on the data to enhance our understanding of how this process works.”
Most space shuttles in recent years have been routed to the Hubble Space Telescope and the international space station and did not have enough room to carry much laboratory equipment. This was the first shuttle expedition in at least two years dedicated almost entirely to scientific experiments.
It was also the first shuttle equipped with a newly developed pressurized aluminum room outfitted as a state-of-the-art laboratory. Crew members, split into “red” and “blue” teams, had worked 24 hours a day in two shifts for 16 days to conduct more than 80 experiments, officials said.
NASA boasted of the broad implications of space exploration while touting Columbia’s latest mission; its official description included a reference to understanding the “elegant workings of the inner universe.” But behind the scenes, the trip was often focused less on the cosmos and more on everyday life on Earth, from developing perfume scents to improving crop yields.
The experiments were informally divided into three areas of science: physics, biology and the study of space exploration itself. In one physics project, the astronauts compressed granular materials to improve engineers’ understanding of construction techniques. That information was expected to lead to new methods for creating stronger foundations under buildings in areas prone to earthquakes, floods and landslides.
In biology, astronauts took advantage of weightlessness to meld a series of cell cultures, enhancing their genetic characteristics and potentially leading to advances in fighting prostate cancer. Protein crystals used to study potential cancer therapies also were grown on the shuttle and appear to have been lost, NASA officials said. Finally, a series of studies addressed the effect of space travel on the body.
Students from schools in Australia, China, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein and the United States packed one corner of the shuttle with spiders, silkworms, fish, bees and ants to study their performance in space.
More than 80% of a main research module’s payload of 9,000 pounds was taken up by NASA research, but -- largely to defray the enormous costs of space travel -- an estimated 18% of the space was reserved for commercial interests.
Some commercial experiments addressed weighty issues back home, such as cancer treatments. Others were more mundane, such as one that asked the astronauts to extract oils from a rose so a company back home could re-create the smell for a space-themed perfume.
Some experiments could have yielded important results in Southern California. For example, the astronauts, taking advantage of their time flying over West African deserts, gathered data about the effect of dust on the climate. Dust contributes to alarming levels of pollutants in the air east of Los Angeles, a problem that has caused a host of lung problems and has long stymied scientists.
Abid said scientists are sensitive to concerns of critics who say the rewards of space travel are too small now to warrant the cost. The dust experiment alone cost $2 million, and by some estimates exploring Mars could ultimately cost $60 billion.
Abid, however, said the measure of successful space travel shouldn’t necessarily be the next “big step,” such as an excursion to Mars. Other benefits could come in more earthly pursuits, he said. Using his own experiment as an example, Abid said that if his studies help lead to even a slight improvement in the efficiency of automobile engines, the results would more than pay for the cost of the research.
NASA, though, remains in a squeeze, stung by criticism on one side that its programs are too expensive with few major leaps in recent years and by criticism on the other side that it shouldn’t be dabbling in science projects in the meantime.
Robert L. Park, professor of physics at the University of Maryland and the director of public information for the American Physical Society, said such experiments are often “like junior high science projects.”
“The impression I got from going over the experiments is that these were not earthshaking experiments of any sort, which is typical,” Park said.
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Gold reported from Houston and Granelli from Los Angeles.
