With the halt of America's space shuttle program due to the Columbia explosion earlier this year, the only way to the International Space Station is on a Russian-launched Soyuz vehicle.

So, Ball State's research team must now go to the Star City space flight complex outside of Moscow instead of NASA facilities in Houston.

"It was a great opportunity to travel to Russia even though it took us flying nearly 24 hours just to get there," said Scott Trappe, director of Ball State's Human Performance Laboratory. "It was a pretty big event with a lot of people there, but we were among the first people to see the crew after they landed."

Joining Trappe on the initial visit to Star City in early May were David Costill, the former HPL director who worked with NASA astronauts in 1996 on a similar project, and Philip Gallagher, an HPL researcher. They examined two Russian cosmonauts and American astronaut Ken Bowersox after a six-month stay on the space station.

"All three were in good shape," Trappe said. "However, being up there for that long was very stressful on their bodies. One of the guys had to be carried into the examination room."

Trappe's team is looking at how lengthy space flights erode muscle strength. For the past year, they have been testing astronauts and cosmonauts before and after four- to six-month stays aboard the space station.

As part of the study, the researchers test muscle strength and take muscle biopsies to examine cellular changes in muscle function following long-term exposure to weightlessness.

The information will allow researchers to learn how muscle adapts to space flight and to develop effective exercise programs to maintain muscle performance in space.

The Ball State group will return to Moscow in late October when the current occupants of the International Space Station return via a Soyuz spacecraft. Astronaut Ed Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko were launched into orbit April 25 instead of a three-man American crew delivered by a NASA space shuttle.

The station will remain occupied by rotating two-man crews on Soyuz spacecraft until American shuttle flights resume.

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