IML-2 Public Affairs Status Report #01 6:00 p.m. CDT, July 8, 1994 0/6:17 MET Spacelab Mission Operations Control Marshall Space Flight Center One of the most complex science missions in the 11-year history of the Spacelab program got underway this afternoon as the seven-member STS-65 crew powered up the second International Microgravity Laboratory (IML-2) payload. The 14-day flight schedule is packed with more than 80 experiments, to be performed in 19 life-science and microgravity-science facilities. The ambitious research agenda builds on experience gained from previous Spacelab missions, with approximately twice the number of experiments and facilities as its predecessor, IML-1, which flew in January 1992. More than 200 scientists representing six space agencies from around the world contributed to IML-2. Their investigations will cover scientific questions that can best be answered away from gravity's influence. Experiments studying human physiology, aquatic animals or cultured cells will help reveal the role gravity plays in shaping life on Earth. Investigations of fluids and materials will uncover more about basic mechanisms which affect nearly every physical science. Payload Specialist Chiaki Mukai of Japan began the first IML-2 experiment operations at 2:35 p.m. CDT, when she activated the European Space Agency's Advanced Protein Crystallization Facility. Housed in two orbiter middeck lockers, it will operate automatically throughout the mission. The versatile space facility is the first to use three different crystal growth methods, allowing scientists to choose the best conditions for their experiments. Scientists from the U.S. and seven European countries are growing biologically important protein crystals which are difficult to produce on Earth. Some 5,000 video images of the crystals made during flight will help them determine the physical mechanisms which govern protein crystal growth. Post-flight analysis of the space-grown crystals will help determine their structure and function, important for a better understanding of living systems and the development of advanced medicines. For instance, the pharmaceutical industry uses structural information to design a drug which binds to a specific protein, blocking a chemically active site. Such a drug fits a protein like a key in a lock to "turn off" the protein's activities, thus possibly regulating metabolic processes. Payload Commander Rick Hieb, Pilot Jim Halsell and Mukai floated into the Spacelab module at 3:21 p.m. Hieb and Halsell had the lab up and running ahead of schedule, just minutes after 4 p.m. Payload operations control from the Marshall Space Flight Center's Spacelab Mission Operations Control facility in Huntsville began about a half hour later. Mukai activated the IML-2 payload, then checked out the European Space Agency's Biorack facility in preparation for loading its many sample containers. The perishable biological specimens were stored on the orbiter middeck shortly before launch. Various containers holding samples for the facility's 19 life science investigations will be relocated for experiment processing more than 2,000 times during the mission. Operation of most of the remaining IML-2 facilities will begin over the next 12 hours. Crew members will continue activating Biorack experiments, look in on the fish and newts in Japan's Aquatic Animal Experiment Unit, and take a mental performance test on a laptop computer for comparison with tests made later in the mission. They will start up radiation and motion detectors to monitor the Spacelab environment. The first experiments will begin in the European Space Agency's Critical Point Facility and Germany's Slow-Rotating Centrifuge Microscope. NASA issues four status reports daily on STS-65/IML-2 activities: science operations reports from Spacelab Mission Operations Control in Huntsville at approximately 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., and orbiter operations reports from Mission Control in Houston at approximately 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.