This Echo is READ ONLY !   NO Un-Authorized Messages Please!
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

STS-107
Report #08 
Wednesday, January 22, 2003 -- 6 p.m. CDT 
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas 

The seven astronauts aboard Columbia beamed down television views of
their smallest companions in orbit today, including insects, spiders,
fish, bees and silk worms that are part of the Space Technology and
Research Students package of experiments designed and developed by
students in six countries. 

The television pictures showed ants busily creating and moving about
tunnels in an ant farm developed by students from Fowler High School
in Syracuse, N.Y.; Garden Orb Weaver spiders beginning to construct
webs in an enclosure designed by students at Glen Waverly Secondary
College of Melbourne, Australia; silkworm larvae beginning to develop
in an experiment designed by students at Jingshan School, Beijing,
China; Medaka fish embryos developing in a tank designed by students
at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Tokyo; and carpenter bees
beginning to construct nests by boring tunnels in wood. 

The experiments are being monitored by both teams of astronauts as
they work in shifts to support the 80 different experiments aboard the 
space shuttle and the Spacehab Research Double Module. The Red Team -- 
Commander Rick Husband, Mission Specialists Kalpana Chawla and Laurel 
Clark and Israel Space Agency Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon - enjoyed 
a half-day off before resuming work with a variety of other 
experiments.

The Red Team worked with the growth of prostate cancer cells in the
Bioreactor Demonstration System, shutdown of the Laminar Soot
Processes experiment, which completed 14 runs in an effort to better
understand the nature of soot created by combustion in microgravity,
and bacteria and yeast growth as part of the Microbial Physiology
Flight Experiment. They also checked on the growth of plants in the
Astroculture experiment that includes miniature roses being grown in
space to produce new fragrances for perfumes. 

The Red Team handed over to the Blue Team - Pilot Willie McCool,
Payload Commander Michael Anderson and Mission Specialist Dave Brown - 
at 5 p.m. CST, and prepared for a sleep shift beginning at 7:09 p.m. 
The Blue Team awoke at 3:09 p.m. to the song "Hakuna Matata" by the 
Baja Men for Anderson from his two kids.

The Blue Team began its day with work on the SOFBALL, or Structures of 
Flame Balls at Low Lewis-number experiment, which scientists hope will 
improve their understanding of lean (low fuel) burning combustion and 
lead to improvements in engine efficiency, reduced emissions, and fire 
safety.

The overnight team also worked with the Advanced Respiratory
Monitoring System, a European Space Agency experiment looking at how
the human body adapts to weightlessness.

After lunch, the team was to calibrate the Mediterranean Israeli Dust
Experiment (MEIDEX) and resume observations after adjusting the
shuttle orientation in orbit to facilitate measurement of small
particles in the atmosphere over the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic
Ocean off the coast of the Sahara desert. 

Cooling and humidity control of the Spacehab module is being
effectively managed through minor adjustments to systems aboard
Columbia and the science module.

                               ###

 - End of File -
================

---