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.. . The Summerville News, Thursday, April 10, 1986
Space Shuttle Tragedy Brings Review Of Program
By WILLIAM G. SCHULZ
- Omif ian News Service
it v
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~_ The explosion of the space
“shuftle Cgmllenger Jan, 28
‘refocused public attention on
‘the most complex space vehi
_cle ever constructed, a piece of
technology that many people
had begun to take for granted.
Ironically, one major goal of
‘NASA's ambitious space shut
tle program has been exactly
that — to make outer space
and its resources routinely ac
“cessible, to move humankind's
activities beyond the planet.
“Nothing ends here," Presi
dent Reagan said followin(f the
disaster. “Our hopes and our
fimrneys continue."’
onetheless, many of the
research projects scheduled for
launch in 1986 — NASA's
*Year of Space Science’’ —
have been cancelled or in
definitely delayed. Had the
disaster not occurred, the
:pace science community un
oubtedly would have selected
the fifth anniversary of the
first space shuttle flight, April
12, 1981, to celebrate the shut
tle's accomplishments,
Z?cecially in the area of scien
ific research and development.
“The unique contribution of
the space shuttle to science is
*et to come,” says Dr. Joseph
[Taterewicz, a historian of space
science at the Smithsonian In
stitution's National Air and
Space Museum in Washington,
D. C. “That contribution will
come from large, long-lifetime
spacecraft that require periodic
attention for maintenance and
improvement, such as the Hub
ble Space Telescope.” Still, the
scientific achievements of the
glast. and those planned for the
ture deserve consideration in
the sobering aftermath of the
trnfedy.
n a range of programs, the
National Aeronautics and
Space Administration has
opened up the frontiers of
for researchers in in
xst.ry. %(:lvemment, academia
— even high school students
who have sesigned and flown
experimentgs with the
assistance of corporate spon
sors. Their accomplishments
and goals show the ingenuity
of the scientific community in
makinfi the shuttle another
valuable research tool.
In the broadest sense, the
space shuttle has brought to
science the frontier of a low
fravity environment. ‘‘Before
981," Richard Halperin, direc
tor of NASA's Microgravity
Sciences and Agplications
Division, says, ‘‘There wasn't
a hell of a lot of time devoted
to this phenomenon, as com
pared with astronomy,
planetology and other
disciplines. It's a very new
science . . . and the results so
far are not conclusive.”
Even so, the research in
dicates some exciting
possibilities. Experiments have
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Early Shuttle History
A new afie in slpaceflight dawned the mor- Cri;g;en orbited Earth for 54 hours.
Mng:f %ril 2, 1981 as the space shut- NASA now faces a mucl;lfloomier pro
tle Columbia blasted off from its launch spect with the Jan. 28 Ch ex;fer shuttle
pad. Astronauts John Young and Robert tragedy. (Photo courtesy of NASA).
shown that substances can be
mixed in higher concentrations
in space than on Earth. New
and better pharmaceuticals
could be produced once the Yro
gram is renewed. Im
provements in storing blood
could result from studies show
ing that w:'?htlessness helps
prevent sedimentation and
subsequent degradation of
platelets, an important blood
com| £,
gasic research on a variety
of industrial materials com
prises the majority of
microgravity investigations on
the shuttle. EventualH.
Halperin s:l{s. such materials
research will have afi)lications
for Earth-based production of
glasses, metals and other
economicall%" valuable
substances. The research, he
says, removes one variable —
gravity — from the equations
that make up scientists’
understanding of how
materials solidify from a fluid
state. With that knowledfe.
better production methods for
substances such as the crystals
used in hish-ss)eed computers
might be developed.
One product — polysotxrene
spheres — has been produced
in space and is now commer
cially available from the Na
tional Bureau of Standards.
The microscogic srheres —
man‘{y thousandg will fit on the
head of a pin — can be used to
calibrate scientific instruments
or industrial machinery such as
that used to manufacture paint
Figments. %unpowder and
lour. On Earth, gravity
hopelessly distorts the sizes
and shapes of these spheres.
When formed in space,
however, the spheres are
almost perfectly uniform.
Some microgravitg ex
periments have been conducted
on Spacelab, a space shuttle
payload devoted exclusively to
science. Designed and built for
NASA by the EuroFean Space
Ageney, the spacelab module
also contains room for a varie
ty of experiments in disciplines
rangi.ng from human biolog}l"to
high-energy astrophysics. The
Spacelab 2 mission in July
1985 contained an exi)eriment
that measured the levels of
vitamin D metabolites in crew
members’ blood. Investigators
used the results to %ain in
sights on the causes of human
bone demineralization and
mineral imbalances.
The Spacelab 2 mission also
featured a cosmic ray detector
designed and built Ky resear
chers at ‘the University of
Chicago. Dubbed *‘the Chicago
Egg" because of its domed
shape, the experiment record
ed these high-energy particles
in an effort to determine their
composition, energies and
sources — astrophysical explo
sions in deep space.
Although most scientific
experiments destined for flight
on the shuttle are expensive to
develop and build, I\?fe\SA has
provided a low-cost alternative
through its Spartan program.
A Spartan packa{;e of in
struments — about the size of
a phone booth — rides to orbit
in the payload bay. The shut
tle's manipulator arm deploys
it, then retrieves the package
when its mission is completed.
These features make the in
struments easier to schedule on
shuttle flights, and the low cost
makes the program accessible
to more researchers, including
graduate students of space
science.
The first Spartan package,
which flew in 1985, looked at
X-ray sources in our-own
alaxy, the Milky Way. A
?uture Spartan experiment,
developetf by Dr. John Kohl
and the engineering iroup at
the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics in
Cambridge, Mass., uses an "oc
culting” system that creates,
in effsect. an artificial solar
eclipse so the instrument can
stUSy the sun’s corona. Such
studies, Kohl says, may help
explain the mechanisms for the
acceleration of the solar wind
and the “‘holes” in the corona,
particularly at the sun’s poles,
which allow the wind to escape.
The future, as Smithsonian
historian Taterewicz indicates,
holds even more promise for
scientific research from the
'slpace shuttle. The Space
elescope will perhaps be one
of the more visible examples,
seeing celestial objects 50
times fainter and with 10 times
better clarity than any ground
based telescope. The eagerly
awaited instrument, originally
scheduled for a launch in 1986,
is designed to view the heavens
in the optical and ultraviolet
regions of the spectrum. To do
both, specially trained shuttle
crews will have to change the
telescope's instrumentation
periodically.
“I'm a strong believer in
fixing and repairing something
already up there,” says Dr.
Giovanni E‘azio. also with the
Center for Astrophysics and
principal investigator for
another large telescope, the
Space Infrared Tel%scope
Facility. scheduled for launch
in the the 19905, SIRTF, too,
will rely on space shuttle crews
for its maintenance and repair.
As a forerunner to SIRTF,
Fazio has already sent into
space a smaller version, the In
frared Telescoi)e. or IR7T.
Astronomers look at in
terstellar dust and gases,
which glow in the infrarefi spec
trum, to shed light on the
mysterious processes of star
formation and to comprehend
better the basic nature and
ultimate fate of the cosmos.
IRT data now being analyzed
will complement information
from NASA's Infrared
Astronomy Satellite and pro
vide new insights about the
design of future space-based
telescopes.
X-ray astronomy will get a
boost early in the next decade
when another CFA
astronomer, Dr. Paul Gorens
tein, sends aloft the Large Area
Modular Array as part of
NASA's Shuttle High Ener
AstroKhysics Laboratory. Tfi}e,
LAMAR project, Gorenstein
says, has two purposes: to
make X-ray observations dur
ing a one-week mission and to
serve as a test model for
similar, yet more powerful
instruments.
The modular concept of
LAMAR will allow it to *‘see"
a bigger chunk at a time of the
universe. Many X-ray sources
— quasars, black holes, stellar
nurseries — lie deep in space
beyond our solar system,
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Gorenstein explains. The
telescope itself is actuall{ eiEht
identical telescopes that look in
unison at a cross-section of the
sky.
The space shuttle will also
take the Advanced X-Ray
Astrophysics Facility and the
Gamma Ray Observatory to
orbit in the coming decades
and service or repair both as
needed. The AXAE instrument
will cover the X-ray portion of
the spectrum with un
precedented sensitivity; GRO
will detect gamma rays across
a greater wavelength range
than any of its predecessors.
Before any of these future
projects take off, though, many
changes dictated by the
Challegger accident will have
occurred in the space shuttle
program. But when the next
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PHONE 857-1012
shuttle is readied for launch,
the sense of excitement, expec
tation and, inevitably, concern
that prevails at the Kenned
| Space Center in Florida wifi
| most certainly be back.
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