Science Station Goes Online With First Tests

SPACEMART

TThe command and control center for scientific research onboard the International Space Station officially opens for business with the first call from the new facility at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., to the crew aboard the International Space Station. Talking with Expedition 1 commander, Astronaut Bill Shepherd are (from right) NASA Deputy Associate Administrator Dr. Daniel Mulville, Marshall Center Director Art Stephenson, and Alan Johnston, Payload Communications Manager. The Payload Operations Center, linking Earth-bound researchers with their experiments and astronauts in orbit, was commissioned Feb. 2, 2001.

Huntsville - March 15, 2001
Dr. Douglas Watt, the principal investigator for the Hoffman Reflex neurological experiment, has received and analyzed data from two data collection sessions completed by the three Expedition 2 crew members.

"The first two data collection sessions for the H-reflex experiment went outstandingly well, with double runs performed by all three subjects on both days," Watt reported from the Aerospace Medical Research Unit of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he analyzed the data. "The data quality was excellent and spinal cord excitability appears to be changing as anticipated."

On Wednesday morning, the Expedition Two crew - Commander Yury Usachev and Flight Engineers Susan Helms and James Voss -- performed the second test of the H-reflex experiment, which studies how the nervous system adapts to the microgravity environment inside the Space Shuttle and Space Station. The first session was completed last Friday on the second day of the STS-102 Space Shuttle mission.

These early sessions conducted on the Space Shuttle are important because the body often changes quickly when exposed to weightlessness. After Tuesday's test, the crew transferred the H-reflex experiment equipment to the Space Station.

"We look forward to the next experiment run, which should be several months from now," said Watt. "We will compare this run to ones before flight and the ones just conducted to determine how large the maximum change in the reflex can be."

On Tuesday night, the Expedition Two crew � James Voss, Yury Usachev and Susan Helms � performed a second test of the Hoffman Reflex neurological experiment. The first session was completed last Friday on the second day of the STS-102 Space Shuttle mission.

H-Reflex studies how the nervous system adapts to the microgravity environment inside the Space Shuttle and Space Station. Dr. Douglas Watt, of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, is the principal investigator for the experiment.

On Tuesday morning during the previous crew shift � ahead of schedule � astronauts transferred the Human Research Facility from the logistics module to the station.

This phone booth-sized rack will support radiation detectors and other experiments to study the physical and chemical changes of the human body in space.

In the weeks ahead, the crew will finish hooking up the rack and checking out its systems -- including a computer workstation and a laptop computer used to collect and transmit data to the ground.

The second and third science experiment racks will be delivered to the Station by the next Shuttle mission, STS-100, set for launch in mid-April.

These racks were built by the Boeing Company at the Marshall Center, and a second, complementary Human Research Facility rack is under construction here now.

It will be delivered to the Space Station on a later expedition. The human life sciences investigations are managed by the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

SPACEMART

Spacehab, Energia Complete Basic Design Of ISS Commercial Module

Moscow - March 5, 2001
Spacehab and RSC Energia have completed the baseline design for their proposed Enterprise commercial space station module project and endorsement of the project by the Russian Space Agency, Rosaviakosmos.

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