May 2 1985
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Lewis Research Center (LeRC) researchers were working on improvements in the National Airspace System (NAS) air-traffic control system to provide more efficient air transportation in the U.S. and to maintain the U.S. position of leadership in civil aviation, the Lewis News reported.
A major NAS requirement was accurate upper-air wind information, necessary for efficient movement and control of aircraft. Dating back to 1982, LeRC recognized this need and proposed and developed, in cooperation with the Environmental Research Laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an interactive data management and enhancement system (MERIT) to improve significantly the accuracy of upper-wind forecasts in the U.S.
To evaluate the potential of MERIT, the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) formed an aviation weather task force of a dozen experts from NOAA, NASA, and universities that was led by Dr. John McCarthy of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Over 18 months at a cost of half a million dollars, the task force would examine all aviation weather forecast products concurrently with MERIT. If the MERIT system could provide improved upper-level wind information (initial tests at NOAA showed a 20 to 30% reduction in wind error compared to the existing system), it was possible that MERIT could become an important contribution to the NAS of the 1990s. (LeRC News, May 2/85, 2)
The waste products of two monkeys and two dozen rats continued to float through the cabin of the Space Shuttle Challenger [see Space Transportation System/Missions, Apr. 29], forcing crew members to rearrange their tight schedules and operate in full surgical gear to clean up, the Washington Post reported. "Be advised we now have feces in the crew compartment and it isn't much fun, guys," commander Robert Overmyer said to the mission control center in Houston. "How many years did we tell them these cages would never work?" With TV cameras recording the activity, Overmyer and mission specialists William Thornton, Norman Thagard, and payload specialist Lodewijk van den Berg, wearing surgical smocks, gloves, and masks, floated about the Spacelab cabin using vacuum cleaners to suck the waste out of the cabin air. At one point Thagard said, "Even the vacuum cleaners aren't enough." The problems began on the day after liftoff with feeding the animals food and water. One rat had to be hand-fed a gelatin bar to get water into him; when physician-astronaut Thornton tried to press food bars into the cage, the bars would crumble and a cloud of tiny particles would scatter in the cabin. "I'm not exaggerating," Thornton told mission control, "but there are food particles flooding out of every crack in those cages. I don't see any way we can stop this except if we had a seal over the entire cage." Monkey and rat feces also leaked out of the cages.
The five scientists also could not deploy a French-built camera, intended to survey for 17 hours hot stars in distant galaxies, because an airlock hatch failed to open. And physicist Taylor Wang was unable to run an experiment to test behavior of drops of fluids in weightlessness because circuit breakers continually popped open. Nine of the 15 Spacelab experiments were running even better than hoped, and the crew described the monkeys and rats as "real clean and real happy." On May 1, however, one of the monkeys got spacesick. "We can tell by the way he's behaving that one of our monkeys is not feeling well," said Dr. Paul Callahan of Ames Research Center. "The other monkey was under the weather his first day in space but he's adapted very well since, which is an almost identical reaction we get from human astronauts." Callahan noted "Monkey No. 1" was not eating and drinking normally, seemed to have a headache, and was generally lethargic and dispirited. "He's just not moving around and the other monkey has begun to do somersaults." Eleven of the Spacelab experiments were running by that time, although mission specialist George Fichtl said "One is a hit-and-miss kind of thing and three look very doubtful." He added the astronauts had proposed to give up on the French-built wide-field camera and that it was doubtful NASA would extend the mission to give the crew additional time to try to deploy it.
On May 2 Fichtl explained that the rats' and one monkey's vigorous movement, which was "much more than expected," was likely the main reason their waste was escaping the cages. "We designed those cages with an airflow control to keep the waste in the cages,' he explained. "Our best guess now is that the animals are so spirited and are enjoying weightlessness so much that they induced turbulence in the cage that's too turbulent to contain the waste." The problems with the animals cast some doubt over future animal flights on Spacelab, the Washington Post continued. NASA had scheduled for 1986 a flight to carry 48 rats and four squirrel monkeys. However, Spacelab mission manager Joseph Cremin insisted that research on animals was crucial to the future of the permanent space station where men and women would have to work in orbit for months at a time. (W Post, May 1/85, A3, May 2/85, All, May 3/85, A3)
NASA announced that research scientist Dr. Billy Wolverton and research chemist Rebecca McDonald at its National Space Technology Laboratory (NSTL), Bay St. Louis, Missouri, had shown that the water hyacinth, when used under controlled conditions, was ideally suited for purifying domestic and certain industrial wastewaters. In addition to the water hyacinth's ability to produce large quantities of fresh water, the researchers determined the plant could be harvested and ground into fertilizers and used to produce biogas and fiber. The water hyacinth also showed promise for partially supplying life-sustaining functions for space travel including oxygen, food, pure water, and waste treatment.
Researchers at NSTL had for 11 years tested the vascular aquatic water hyacinth (the floating species) as an inexpensive method of treating wastewater. The research led to installation of a simple and cost-effective wastewater-treatment system at NSTL and development communities in Florida, Texas, and California.
More recently, NASA developed an advanced natural wastewater-treatment process that combined anaerobic microbial filter technology with the vascular plant wastewater treatment technology to produce an efficient hybrid system that used rooted, cold-tolerant plants such as common reed growing on the surface of a microbial rock filter bed. The filter reed system had advantages over the floating aquatic system because wastewater was exposed to the atmosphere only after treatment and higher chemical concentrations could be tolerated because of the high surface microbial filter. Although NASA developed the system for domestic sewage, the system had shown a potential for chemical waste and drinking water treatment. (NASA Release 85-65)
In elaborating on a report that appeared in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Universe [see NASA/Technology Transfer, Feb. 8], NASA issued information on a system called the excimer laser, a laser system developed by a team of physicians at Los Angeles's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and laser scientists at JPL to nonsurgically clean clogged arteries with unprecedented precision. The system may eventually allow patients with arteriosclerosis to avoid coronary bypass surgery.
JPL scientists originally developed the excimer laser to measure gases such as ozone in the earth's atmosphere. Investigations into its application to medicine began a year and a half previously when Cedars-Sinai physicians Warren Grundfest, Frank Litvack, and James Forrester, who were conducting research into the potential of lasers in cardiology, sought a more precise and cooler laser than those currently available for use in medicine.
They found such a laser in the excimer developed by JPL laser researchers Drs. James Laudenslager, Thomas Pacala, Stuart McDermid, and David Rider. Working with the Cedars-Sinai physicians and a fiber optics consultant, Dr.
Tsvi Goldenberg, the JPL team refined the laser for the delicate cardiovascular cleaning procedure devised by the medical researchers. Although the researchers were properly cautious in their predictions of the laser's medical potential, the results of experiments were encouraging.
NASA's office of space science and applications funded development of the excimer laser. (NASA Release 85-66)
NASA announced that Inorganic Coatings, Inc. was providing interior corrosion protection to the refurbished Statue of Liberty by means of a primer coating known as K-Zinc 531, an aerospace spinoff product developed at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to protect gantries and other structures at NASA's primary launch site, Kennedy Space Center (KSC).
Because KSC was located on Florida's Atlantic Coast, its launch facilities required greater corrosion protection due to constant exposure to salt spray and fog. GSFC undertook a research program to develop a coating that would not only resist salt corrosion, but also protect KSC launch structures from very hot rocket exhaust and the thermal shock created by rapid temperature changes during a space launch. The GSFC research resulted in an inorganic water-based potassium silicate binder, a compound that provided long-term protection with a single application.
NASA granted in 1981 a license for the coating to Shane Associates, which signed an agreement with Inorganic Coatings to allow it to become the sole manufacturer and sales agent under the Shane license. Inorganic Coatings assigned the trade name K-Zinc 531 to the compound, which was nontoxic, nonflammable, and had no organic emissions. The high ratio silicate formulation bonded to steel in 30 minutes and created a hard ceramic finish with superior adhesion and abrasion resistance. It required no straining before application and could be mixed on site. (NASA Release 85-64)
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