Jan 14 1985
From The Space Library
NASA announced that Space Shuttle flight 51-C would carry the first of two experiments to investigate effects of different diseases on red blood cell aggregation and blood viscosity. The experiment was originally scheduled for mission [[STS51-A|51-A]] in November 1984 but withdrawn due to orbiter weight and center-of-gravity considerations. The Department of Defense (DOD) had agreed to add the experiment to 51-C, a dedicated DOD mission.
Called aggregation of red blood cells (ARC), the experiment would determine rate of formation (kinetics) and internal structure and organization (morphology) of red cells and the thickness (viscosity) of whole blood at high- and low-flow rates. Healthy donors and donors with various medical conditions such as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer would provide blood samples. Researchers would compare results obtained in microgravity with results from a simultaneous and identical ground-based experiment to determine what effects gravity had on the kinetics and morphology of the blood and, therefore, whether researchers could use information obtained in microgravity to formulate new diagnostic tests or improve existing tests for the benefit of clinical research and medical practice.
Flight hardware, weighing about 165 lb. and installed in three mid-deck lockers in the crew cabin, would consist of a container housing a blood pump/storage subsystem, parallel plate slit capillary viscometer, photo/optical subsystem, thermal control system, pressure transducer, and an electronics equipment package to provide automated control and data acquisition. A crew member would activate the experiment; the electronics package would automatically operate all other procedures. Running time would be about eight hours.
Dr. Leopold Dintenfass of the Kanematsu Institute (Department of Medical Research), Sydney, Australia, had developed the experiment and experiment hardware. Marshall Space Flight Center had responsibility for the flight experiment.
After landing, data from the flight experiments would be delivered to Dintenfass for analysis and comparison with ground-based experiment data. (NASA Release 85-6; NASA MOR E-420-51-C-21 [prelaunch] Jan 23/85)
ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH
NASA announced that Goddard Space Flight Center's (GSFC) Wallops Island, VA, facility in cooperation with the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory (AFGL) at Hanscom AFB, Massachusetts, and the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), Copenhagen, Denmark, would carry out that winter the 1985 Cooperative Observations of Polar Electrodynamics (COPE) project of sounding rocket research in Greenland to gather knowledge about the solar-earth relationship. The project would include studies of polar-cap turbulence and electrodynamics, auroral-zone electrodynamics, auroral-electrojet turbulence, neutral-atmosphere coupling, and polar-ionospheric irregularities.
Researchers selected Greenland for the investigations because of its access to the auroral oval, polar cap, and polar cusp; an existing rocket range; support from the Sondre Stromfjord incoherent-scatter radar, the Hi Lat Spacecraft, and the extensive array of scientific ground-observing stations in Greenland, Scandinavia, and North America; and a broad choice of launch azimuths. GSFC/Wallops Flight Facility personnel had spent several weeks during the previous summer at the Greenland Sondre Stromfjord facility installing additional launchers and related ground-support equipment, radar, telemetry, and communications systems and erecting vehicle and payload assembly structures.
Project experimenters scheduled nine suborbital rocket launches of which two would release chemicals creating artificial vapor clouds 250 km high. NASA scheduled seven flights: two Black Brant Xs, two Terrier-Malemutes, a Taurus-Orion, a Nike-Tomahawk, and a Taurus-Tomahawk; AFGL scheduled two missions: a Black Brant VIII and a Black Brant IX. (GSFC Release 85-5)
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