THE shuttle Columbia and its seven crew are gone, but some of the research they carried out during their fateful 16-day mission will live on.
While many of the 80 experiments that were carried out on the STS-107 mission required samples to be returned for analysis back on Earth, many others relayed their results to the ground throughout the mission. The data they have yielded will undoubtedly lead to significant findings over the coming months.
Among the successfully completed investigations were experiments in physics and Earth observation whose data was sent back throughout the mission. But most of the biological experiments, including studies of protein crystal growth and a variety of insect and animal experiments, were lost.
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Nevertheless, a set of student-designed projects from six different nations, designed to study the behaviour of fish, ants, bees, silkworms and spiders, produced good results. These samples were to be brought back to Earth for study, but the experiments were also continuously monitored by both still and video cameras, and temperature and humidity data was transmitted throughout the mission. NASA estimates that the students got about 70 per cent of the results they expected, for comparison with control experiments that were carried out simultaneously on the ground.
Other experiments, including ones involving combustion, soot formation and fire suppression, and a study of solar radiation levels, were entirely based on data sent back in real time. A set of tests called the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment (MEIDEX), for example, used a calibrated camera to monitor transient events in the Earth鈥檚 atmosphere, including large-scale dust clouds and electrical activity above storm clouds. It yielded images of rare atmospheric phenomena called elves and sprites (快猫短视频, 1 February, p 10), as well as capturing an unexpected pall of grey smoke over the Amazon rainforest. The results have 鈥渃aused great excitement鈥�, according to the experiment鈥檚 principal scientist, Yoav Yair, who recently presented some of the sprite data at a conference.
David Liskowsky of NASA鈥檚 Office of Biological and Physical Research estimates that at least 50 per cent and perhaps as much as 90 per cent of the data from Columbia鈥檚 experiments was saved.