STS-78 Day 1 Highlights

On Thursday, June 20, 1996, 12:00 p.m. CDT, STS-78 MCC Status Report # 1 reports:

The Space Shuttle Columbia blasted off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on time at 9:49 a.m. CDT today on a 16-day medical research mission that, if extended to 17 days as planned, would become the longest shuttle mission in history.

The seven member crew of U.S., French and Canadian astronauts will conduct 41 major experiments on how human beings and other living organisms along with various materials change in a weightless environment.

Crew members opened the shuttle's payload bay doors about 11:15 a.m. CDT, signaling the beginning of orbital operations and giving the go-ahead to activate the pressurized Spacelab module which is housed in Columbia's cargo bay.

With all systems aboard Columbia performing well, the orbiter continues to circle the Earth every 90 minutes at an altitude of 176 statute.

On Thursday, June 20, 1996, 5:00 p.m. CDT, STS-78 MCC Status Report # 2 reports:

Orbiting more than 170 miles over the surface of the Earth, Columbia's astronauts successfully activated the Spacelab module housing more than 40 life science and microgravity experiments in the Shuttle's cargo bay.

The experiments focus on the physiological changes that take place in the human body during spaceflight and also on utilizing the unique microgravity environment to study materials processing techniques. For the next 16 days, the seven-member crew will devote their time to these investigations.

Commander Tom Henricks shared a unique view of Columbia's climb to orbit with flight controllers today, replaying images from a small camera that was mounted on the flight deck. The video followed Columbia's flight from just before main engine start through main engine cutoff, showing the force of main engine and solid rocket booster ignition as experienced by the astronauts.

Late this afternoon, flight controllers performed a dump of the Backup Flight Software that experienced intermittent transients during Columbia's launch this morning. With the dump complete, the flight control team will assess and evaluate the data. The error seen on the BFS this morning will not affect orbiter operations or mission duration.

With all systems aboard Columbia and in the Spacelab performing well, work with the life and microgravity science payloads is underway as the orbiter circles the Earth very 90 minutes.

On Thursday, June 20, 1996, 6:30 p.m. CST, STS-78 Payload Status Report # 01 reports: (MET 0/09:00)

The Life and Microgravity Spacelab mission, laying the foundation for future long-term space exploration, is under way after a picture- perfect launch of Space Shuttle Columbia at 9:49 a.m. CDT today.

After achieving an intended altitude of 173 statute miles above Earth, where Columbia will orbit for the next 16 days, the seven-member flight crew began work immediately.

In fact, they began ahead of schedule: Approximately an hour before scheduled, the crew opened and set up their Spacelab laboratory -- the astronauts' workplace for the next two-plus weeks.

There they began setting up systems to conduct more than 40 diverse experiments representing involvement in the mission of 11 nations. These experiments are designed to examine how human beings and other organisms, as well as various materials, change in the weightless environment of space.

This first flight day has been a fast-paced one: LMS Mission Scientist Dr. Patton Downey, characterizing the flight as a "marathon mission," said "today was the busiest first shift of activities we've ever had for Spacelab. Virtually every experiment on board either had its equipment activated or checked out."

Just two hours after launch, Payload Specialists Dr. Jean-Jacques Favier of France and Dr. Robert Thirsk of Canada began the mission's important human physiology studies by donning electrodes and sensors to monitor their eye, head and torso movements.

Because many astronauts experience motion sickness in space particularly for the first several days of flight as they adapt to the weightless environment researchers hope the results of this study could help astronauts avoid movements that contribute to motion sickness. That could also lead to practical ways on Earth to avoid motion sickness in our cars, boats or on planes. The experiment, called the Torso Rotation Experiment, was designed by Dr. Douglas Watt of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Mission Specialists Dr. Charles E. Brady and Dr. Richard Linnehan, who joined their two crew members in the early afternoon in the motion sickness study, also participated with Favier and Thirsk in initial flight tests to measure muscle strength and control.

Researchers have found that muscle fibers become smaller, or atrophy, in the absence of gravity. On previous missions, loss of muscle and a reduction in fiber size have been documented in numerous studies. Fortunately, these responses to microgravity seem to be short-lived, disappearing when astronauts return to Earth. But the effects of long- duration spaceflight on muscles and bones remains unknown. A series of six tests on this mission three sponsored by NASA and three by the European Space Agency will continue investigations in this area.

This series of experiments is conducted on the Torque Velocity Dynamometer, a device somewhat akin to but more highly sophisticated than exercise equipment found in a gym. The device provides precise measurements to calculate levels of muscle performance and function, including strength, the amount of force produced and fatigue.

Initial blood samples have been drawn from four payload crew members: Favier, Thirsk, Brady and Mission Specialist Dr. Richard Linnehan. The blood samples will be used by scientists conducting the human physiology investigations. Information collected from these life science investigations will help prepare crews for longer duration missions as human activity in space expands.

Just as life science experiments onboard Columbia may unlock secrets of microgravity's effect on humans, the LMS microgravity experiments are focused on understanding the subtle influences at work in the gravity- free environment during processing of various materials, such as samples of specialized alloys. During previous missions, scientists found that materials processed on orbit revealed underlying secrets that were masked or distorted by gravity in Earth-based laboratories.

Today, Favier activated the Advanced Gradient Heating Facility furnace which will be used to solidify alloys and crystals in a number of experiments designed to understand the conditions at which the structures of freezing materials change in the solidifying process. Researchers hope the investigations with this new furnace will increase knowledge of the physical processes involved in solidification, and lead to improvements in materials processing on Earth.

For the mission's first experiment using this high-temperature facility, Payload Commander Susan Helms this afternoon placed an experiment cartridge into the furnace to study the transition in solidifying metal mixtures from ordered, long, column-like grains to unordered, round grains. The principal investigator for the experiment is Dr. Denis Camel of the French Atomic Energy Commission in Grenoble, France.

With today's launch of Columbia on the LMS mission, NASA and its international partners are on the way toward a significant, short-term goal to discover new applications in cutting-edge areas of science. Similar to the way business will be conducted on the Space Station, the international crew aboard Columbia is working together as a single shift to ensure a consistent, daily pattern of activities. Also very similar to future Space Station operations, LMS researchers from the United States and abroad are sharing resources such as crew time and equipment.

Some LMS science teams are huddled at Marshall Center's Spacelab Mission Operations Control Center, as in previous missions. But for the first time, most of the science teams are working from their bases all over the world, and are linked to Marshall Center by a sophisticated teleconferencing network.

LMS Mission Manager Mark Boudreaux of Marshall summed up this meticulously planned mission as having "the key ingredients to take us into the next era of space exploration: the International Space Station."

With the Spacelab program moving toward its conclusion, Mission Scientist Downey said, "The scientific investigations of this mission resemble the operations envisioned for the Space Station more than any previous mission. The mixture of scientific disciplines, international participation, and shortened time for the development of this mission are an ideal precursor for the Space Station."

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