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According to NASA's official site about the Space Shuttle Columbia's final, tragic flight, the sole mission of the astronauts was space research. This flight, known as STS-107 (short for Space Transportation System, 107th flight), carried over 80 experiments that used the unique microgravity conditions of orbit to investigate everything from the physics of fire suppression to growing protein crystals for use in medicine. Most people have heard of "zero-g," but that doesn't accurately describe the conditions on board a space shuttle. While orbiting the Earth, astronauts experience microgravity -- one-millionth the pull of gravity here on the
ground. It's not quite zero-g, but it's close. And this microgravity environment is unlike anything on Earth, so it's a great place to perform many types of experiments. About half of the experiments Columbia carried were commercial in nature. These were sponsored by businesses that hoped the results would translate into new products. NASA and other groups, such as the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, sponsored the rest. In addition, elementary school students in the U.S., Australia, China, Israel, Japan, and Liechtenstein sent up experiments to understand the effect of space flight on fish, spiders, ants, silkworms, and bees. Two of Columbia's biological and physical research experiments
tested cell growth in weightlessness. One of these projects was aimed at combating prostate cancer, and the other sought to improve crop yields. An experiment on growing protein crystals was designed to create a possible therapy for bone cancer, and yet another hoped to improve the efficiency of anti-cancer drugs. A special chamber was created to house experiments on fire combustion and suppression. An experiment on granular materials was aimed at providing insight into construction techniques that could withstand earthquakes, floods, and landslides. PDF files explaining many of these projects are available on the NASA experiment fact sheet page. While in space, Columbia's crew
of seven worked 12-hour shifts in two teams so that scientific research could continue 24 hours per day. The loss of life is foremost in everyone's hearts and minds, but the loss of valuable work on board Columbia will be felt as well. Some research data had already been sent back to Earth before the disaster, but information that depended upon the astronauts themselves and on physical tests was completely lost. Much of the medical research was destroyed. Hundreds of years of work by scientists on the ground were also destroyed in this
tragedy.
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