The seven astronauts aboard Columbia beamed down television views of

their smallest companions in orbit today, including insects, spiders,

fish, bees and silk worms that are part of the Space Technology and

Research Students package of experiments designed and developed by

students in six countries. Submitted by Arthur - N1ORC

STS-107 MCC Status Report #08

Wednesday, January 22, 2003 -- 6 p.m. CDT

Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

The seven astronauts aboard Columbia beamed down television views of

their smallest companions in orbit today, including insects, spiders,

fish, bees and silk worms that are part of the Space Technology and

Research Students package of experiments designed and developed by

students in six countries.

The television pictures showed ants busily creating and moving about

tunnels in an ant farm developed by students from Fowler High School in

Syracuse, N.Y.; Garden Orb Weaver spiders beginning to construct webs in

an enclosure designed by students at Glen Waverly Secondary College of

Melbourne, Australia; silkworm larvae beginning to develop in an

experiment designed by students at Jingshan School, Beijing, China;

Medaka fish embryos developing in a tank designed by students at the

Tokyo Institute of Technology in Tokyo; and carpenter bees beginning to

construct nests by boring tunnels in wood.

The experiments are being monitored by both teams of astronauts as they

work in shifts to support the 80 different experiments aboard the space

shuttle and the Spacehab Research Double Module. The Red Team --

Commander Rick Husband, Mission Specialists Kalpana Chawla and Laurel

Clark and Israel Space Agency Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon – enjoyed a

half-day off before resuming work with a variety of other experiments.

The Red Team worked with the growth of prostate cancer cells in the

Bioreactor Demonstration System, shutdown of the Laminar Soot Processes

experiment, which completed 14 runs in an effort to better understand the

nature of soot created by combustion in microgravity, and bacteria and

yeast growth as part of the Microbial Physiology Flight Experiment. They

also checked on the growth of plants in the Astroculture experiment that

includes miniature roses being grown in space to produce new fragrances

for perfumes.

The Red Team handed over to the Blue Team – Pilot Willie McCool, Payload

Commander Michael Anderson and Mission Specialist Dave Brown – at 5 p.m.

CST, and prepared for a sleep shift beginning at 7:09 p.m. The Blue Team

awoke at 3:09 p.m. to the song “Hakuna Matata" by the Baja Men for

Anderson from his two kids.

The Blue Team began its day with work on the SOFBALL, or Structures of

Flame Balls at Low Lewis-number experiment, which scientists hope will

improve their understanding of lean (low fuel) burning combustion and

lead to improvements in engine efficiency, reduced emissions, and fire

safety.

The overnight team also worked with the Advanced Respiratory Monitoring

System, a European Space Agency experiment looking at how the human body

adapts to weightlessness.

After lunch, the team was to calibrate the Mediterranean Israeli Dust

Experiment (MEIDEX) and resume observations after adjusting the shuttle

orientation in orbit to facilitate measurement of small particles in the

atmosphere over the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean off the coast of

the Sahara desert.

Cooling and humidity control of the Spacehab module is being effectively

managed through minor adjustments to systems aboard Columbia and the

science module.