Aug 10 2001
From The Space Library
NASA launched Space Shuttle Discovery STS-105/ISS-7A.1 at 4:10 p.m. Central Daylight Time (CDT). Shuttle crew consisted of Mission Commander Scott J. Horowitz, Pilot Frederick W. “Rick” Sturckow, Mission Specialists Daniel T. Barr and Patrick G. Forrester; and Expedition 3 crew members, Frank L. Culbertson Jr., Vladimir N. Dezhurov, and Mikhail Tyurin. One of the main purposes of the mission was to transport the Expedition 3 crew to the ISS, returning Expedition 2 crew members to Earth. Another objective was to use an Italian-built, 9,000-pound (4,100-kilogram) Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) called Leonardo to deliver supplies to the ISS. Leonardo would deliver six resupply stowage racks, four resupply stowage platforms, and two scientific experiment racks for the station’s laboratory. Discovery’s payload also included NASA’s scientific project, the Materials International Space Station Experiments (MISSE). (NASA, “STS-105: A New Crew Arrives at the International Space Station,” http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/ shuttle/archives/sts-105/ (accessed 7 November 2008); NASA KSC, “STS-105,” http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-105/mission-sts-105.html (accessed 7 November 2008).
Gerard A. Kriss of Johns Hopkins University led a group of astronomers using NASA’s Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite to obtain the best observations to date of helium gas remaining from the Big Bang. The observations provided information about the universe’s architecture millions of years ago, giving empirical support for theories about how matter in the expanding universe had condensed into a structure that permeated space between galaxies. The FUSE satellite had observed the light of the distant quasar HE2347-4342, and scientists had used the data it produced to make comparative analyses of the light’s absorption by helium and hydrogen gas on its trajectory to Earth. The astronomers had compared the ionization of the helium and hydrogen, the result of the gases’ absorption of light, to determine the most likely source of the energy that had heated the universe during its early formation. They concluded that, most likely, a combination of quasars and newly formed stars had produced the ionization of helium and hydrogen gases. Moreover, the presence of helium, in regions with no hydrogen, supported the theory that the universe’s architecture resulted from extensive gravitational instabilities during the chaos after the Big Bang. (NASA, “New View of Primordial Helium Traces Structure of Early Universe,” news release 01-160, 9 August 2001; G. A. Kriss, “Resolving the Structure of Ionized Helium in the Intergalactic Medium with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer,” Science 293, no. 5532 (10 August 2001): 1112–1116.)
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