Late this afternoon, at 4:44 p.m. CDT, CNN anchor John Holliman will
conduct an interview with Linnehan to discuss the interdependency of
oceanic research and space-based research. Also participating in the
event will be Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of the late ocean explorer
Jacques Cousteau.
Columbia remains in a 154 x 137 n.m. elliptical orbit, circling the
Earth once every 90 minutes.
The crew will go to sleep at 10:59 p.m. CDT this evening and receive a
wake up call from Mission Control on Tuesday morning at 6:59 a.m.
On Monday, April 20, 1998, 6:00 p.m. CDT, STS-90 MCC Status Report # 7
reports:
Columbia's astronauts took virtual trips down a never-ending
hallway, put rats through their paces on zero-gravity mazes and
continued to record detailed information about their sleep patterns
and breathing habits today as the Neurolab mission continued its
studies of the human nervous system.
STS-90 Commander Rick Searfoss, Pilot Scott Altman, Mission
Specialists Rick Linnehan, Kay Hire and Dave Williams and Payload
Specialists Jay Buckey and Jim Pawelczyk continued their research
unimpeded by any technical difficulties as the 16-day research mission
hit its stride.
Each of the payload crew members -- Linnehan, Williams, Buckey and
Pawelczyk took turns working with the four male Fischer rats as part
of the Escher Staircase Behavior Testing of Adult Rats experiment. The
rats were placed in the General Purpose Work Station for the tests,
which involved placing them on two different tracks. Each of the
tracks, one named after the artist who painted similar
three-dimensional staircases and the other called the "magic carpet"
that looks like a cross that can be inverted was used for several
runs. The rats have "hyper drive" units placed on their heads,
connected to the hippocampus area of their brains and monitoring
equipment with electrodes made of microscopic wires. The hippocampus
is the part of the brain used to develop spatial maps that help the
rats navigate from one place to the other. Scientists are studying how
the rats' nervous systems "rewire" themselves to accommodate the
disorienting effects of microgravity.
The four payload crew members also continued their work with the
virtual reality headgear called the Virtual Environment Generator
(VEG). The VEG evaluates visual and inner ear cues help the
astronauts determine body orientation changes in the absence of
gravity. Today's virtual voyages included walks down a never-ending
hallway, visits to a tumbling Spacelab-like room and encounters with
upside-down astronauts in a tilted virtual Spacelab. The experiment,
designed to help scientists understand how the human brain switches
from inner ear cues to visual cues when in microgravity, could have
important applications for people on Earth who suffer from balance and
orientation difficulties.
Hire, Williams, Linnehan and Pawelczyk also took turns breathing
into Pulmonary Function Test (PFT) equipment and wearing instrumented
Respiratory Inductance Plethysmograph (RIP) suits so that data could
be collected on their breathing patterns and blood concentrations of
oxygen and carbon dioxide. Researchers are looking at whether altered
breathing patterns in space affect astronaut sleep. The studies also
may help scientists understand sleep disruption experienced by many
people on Earth.
Reporter John Holliman and Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of the late
undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau, spoke with Linnehan, a
veterinarian and former Navy oceanographer, in an interview for the
Cable News Network.
Columbia remains in a 154 x 137 n.m. elliptical orbit, circling the
Earth once every 90 minutes.
The crew will go to sleep at 10:59 p.m. CDT this evening and receive
a wake up call from Mission Control on Tuesday morning at 6:59 a.m.
Go to STS-90 Flight Day 5 Highlights: